Organization XIII: Fangirl Extermination Squad
by Mr. Garbanzo
Summary: In an alternate universe very similar to our own, a group of black-cloaked superheroes is the world's last defense against a threat that makes the Heartless look rather cute and cuddly in comparison... Fangirls.
1. Pandora's Box for the 21st Century

**PROLOGUE**  
_~ Pandora's Box for the 21st Century ~_

The Internet.

It allows its users to communicate almost instantly with any other computer on the planet, and provides them with nearly-endless amounts of information on just about any topic that one could imagine. It is, perhaps, the single greatest advancement of the 20th century.

But like all other advancements, the Internet brought new problems along with its benefits. Instantaneous communication allowed terrorist groups and criminals to organize their activities faster and more efficiently. The wealth of information quickly expanded to include all types of pornography, recipes for drugs and poisons, instructions for making bombs, classified information stolen from government archives... and some things simply too horrible to describe. Things that no sane person should ever have to see.

In the early years, those things were confined to the virtual "world" that the Internet had quickly become. But not anymore.

The first wave of them appeared in the mid-nineties--seemingly-normal teenage girls would suddenly withdraw from their usual activities in order to spend more and more time on their computers. For days on end, no sound came from their rooms but the incessant clacking of fingers against the keyboard and the clicking of the mouse. After several weeks, the girls would suddenly run out of energy and fall asleep, with their faces landing flat on their keyboards as they collapsed in their chairs.

After that, the process could no longer be reversed. The transformation into a Fangirl was complete. When the girls awakened from their day-long sleep in front of their computer, they were no longer themselves--they had become part of the Fangirl hivemind which had somehow come into existence throughout the Internet. Their bodies had transformed, as well--their facial features were gone, replaced by strings of symbols used to represent faces on the Internet. Their height and weight shifted, usually toward being shorter and thinner.

And finally--perhaps worst of all--they gained bizarre powers that allowed them to wreak havoc on the world around them. Some gained the power to reverse aging, transforming old men into twenty-somethings and younger people into children. Others became able to change even more about their victims--causing heterosexual men to suddenly become gay, drastically reducing people's strength or intelligence, turning regular people into evil, sadistic murderers. The most dangerous of all altered reality itself, causing fictional characters to suddenly spring into existence or trapping people in illusionary worlds.

But the world is not defenseless against the Fangirl onslaught.

Twelve years ago, six people who had encountered the Fangirls firsthand came together to study these monsters in hopes of figuring out how to stop them. After two years of in-depth Fangirl research, the six formed a group dedicated to fighting off dangerous Fangirl infestations and working toward a cure for Fangirlism--or, if that proved to be impossible, total Fangirl extermination.

Today, this group has expanded far beyond its six original members, recruiting dozens of people who had been attacked by Fangirls and managed to survive with their sanity intact. Their study of Fangirls has expanded as well, to the point where computers can detect the presence of Fangirls all over the world and scientists can spot the earliest warning signs in girls who have not yet completed their transformation.

They are the world's only hope against the Fangirl menace.

They are... Organization XIII.


	2. Unconventional Warfare

**CHAPTER 1**  
_~ Unconventional Warfare ~_

On the outside, the tall, rocky mountain looked perfectly normal. It was a bit larger than most mountains in Japan, but other than the occasional falling rock, it was generally peaceful on the surface.

Deep within the side of the mountain, however, it was another story entirely. Black-cloaked men and women of all shapes and sizes scurried about in hallways carved out of the ancient mountain rock, chattering back and forth as they went. Somewhere even further down in the mountain, an alarm began to sound. Despite its silent outer layer, the home base of the group known as Organization XIII was total chaos on the inside.

In one particular hallway, several members were running along with their hoods down, talking amongst themselves as they went. A young woman with long, dark hair and rather large breasts was in the front, followed closely by a child wearing a cowboy hat.

"That was another Fangirl alarm..."

"Another one already!? Those guys who got sent out on the last one aren't even back yet!"

A short and pudgy man with an afro, waddling along a few feet behind the other two and struggling to keep up, cursed loudly.

"Dammit, that's the fourth one today!"

Everyone else in the hall probably would have turned to look at him, if they weren't too busy rushing around trying to figure out what was going on.

"That means they're probably gonna start sending guys like us out pretty soon," the fat man grumbled, "This can't possibly get any worse!"

The three cloaked people suddenly skidded to a halt as a man twice their size stepped into the hallway from one of the nearby rooms. He turned to face them, and held up his hands slightly, motioning for them to stop.

"It wouldn't be wise to say such a thing," the huge man said, his deep voice echoing slightly in the hallway.

"Lexaeus?", the dark-haired girl asked, "What's going on?"

The huge man said nothing; he only stepped aside, motioning for the other three to go into the room he had just come from. They all nodded, and quickly followed his directions, filing into the room. One wall of the room was almost completely covered by a network of technology, with multiple screens all connected to a series of futuristic-looking computer towers. There were three chairs in front of the computer system, but only one was occupied--a tiny, pale-skinned girl, barely visible from behind the chair, just sat and stared blankly at the screen in front of her.

"Naminé... these three would like to see what's going on."

The little girl looked at Lexaeus for a second, then nodded and turned back toward the computer. She typed a series of commands into the keyboard, going slowly and carefully to avoid making any mistakes.

"Dammit, where's Zagan when ya need him?", the fat man blurted out, apparently annoyed at how long Naminé was taking to set up the computer. "When that guy's in here, he types so fast ya can hardly see his fingers movin'!"

"He had to go to the bathroom," Naminé said, barely above a whisper. "He asked me to operate the Fangirl Detection System for him while he was gone."

After a few more seconds, the little girl finished what she was doing, and four different maps popped up on the largest screen. Each map was splattered with bright pink dots, signifying recent Fangirl activity; in three of the four, those pink dots were joined by silvery-colored markings that showed the current positions of all the Organization XIII members who had been sent out to deal with the infestations.

On one of the maps, the pink dots were rapidly fading away. The silver marks were advancing to the west, heading toward one last cluster of Fangirls that had splintered off from the main group. The second and third maps, however, were still covered in a pink fuzz whose outer layers were only beginning to be chipped away. On the fourth map, where no Organization members were present, the pink mass had spread out and covered up an area approximately the size of a large building.

Naminé pushed another button, and labels flashed into existence above each of the silver marks symbolizing Organization members. On the first map, where the Fangirls were almost cleared out, three of the marks were now accompanied by the Roman numerals "II," "III," and "X." The second map's silver marks were topped off by Roman numerals as well--"VII," "XI," and "XII." And on the third map, where the Fangirl swarm had barely been touched, a final trio of numbers appeared: "VI," "VIII," and "IX."

Along with the numbered marks, each screen had several with small pictures instead of numbers. These symbolized those members of the Organization who, like Naminé and the other three who had gathered in the computer room, did not have any ranking within the group--that is, anyone other than the top thirteen officials.

"Hmm... it looks like most of the stronger fighters are already out there," the dark-haired girl mumbled as she scanned the four maps on the screen.

She turned toward Lexaeus for a second, then continued.

"Other than you, and Xemnas himself... there's not really anyone left who could take out a whole swarm..."

"You forgot Roxas again," the kid in the cowboy hat noted. Lexaeus nodded and smiled slightly--and though both of them had missed the fact that Vexen was still around as well, he didn't mention it.

"I dunno, Banbu," the fat man said, "You really think Samurai Kid can take out a whole swarm by himself?"

"Well, uh... who says he's gotta go by himself?"

"Hmm... Banbu may have a point."

Lexaeus simply sat back and watched as the three younger members argued back and forth. Just by their words and actions, he could tell which one of the higher-ranking members had trained them. Banbu, the youngest member in the entire Organization, seemed to have inherited Axel's friendship with Roxas... as well as his tendency to jump into things without thinking them through first. The portly Tundo had become a surprisingly powerful fighter under Xaldin's watch, and had also picked up a few of the hairy elf's bad habits: worrying a bit too much about what could happen, and cracking jokes just a bit too often. Not to mention his atrocious table manners. And finally, Vi--the calm, dark-haired girl, who always paid attention to the available facts and spent a lot of time--perhaps even a bit _too much _time--thinking things over before making any final decisions... it was clear that Lexaeus had trained her himself.

_They're growing up fast,_ he thought, just barely cracking a smile once again.

"Xigbar, Xaldin, and Luxord should be coming back soon," Naminé said, causing the others to suddenly stop arguing and pay attention to the screen. All but a few of the pink dots on the first map had vanished, and the silver marks of the Organization had gathered toward the center of the area.

"Naminé... send the van out to pick them up," Lexaeus said, turning away from the girl at the computers and facing the other three. "Vi, Tundo, and Banbu... follow me."

* * *

Outside of the base, the mountain rumbled for a few seconds before a large slab of rock suddenly shifted, revealing a tunnel that went deep beneath the surface of the mountainside. Hardly a second passed before a bizarre vehicle (which looked a lot like a Volkswagen van) came rocketing out of the tunnel, flying through the air for a few moments before flashing with energy and disappearing off into the distance.

Minutes later, the van flashed into existence once again--this time packed full of black-cloaked passengers, with Luxord sitting in the driver's seat. The gambler's favorite pair of fuzzy dice, which were clearly not there when the van left the base, had already found their way onto the rear-view mirror.

The van flew into the base and rolled along the tunnel, slowing down as it went. Eventually it came to a complete stop, and all of its doors slowly began to swing open, its occupants still sore from their latest battle and not moving quite as quickly as they could.

Xigbar hopped out of the passenger's-side window, slowing his fall using his gravity-defying powers before limping off toward the main hallway of the base. He was soon followed by Xaldin and Luxord, both of which had several visible burns and slashes in their cloaks. The handful of lower-ranking members stood around the van for a few minutes, talking a little and examining each other's wounds, before they slowly began to shuffle away in the same direction as their superior officers.

The worn-out group was nearly bowled over by Roxas and Banbu as they came rushing into the tunnel where the Dimensional Hippievan was waiting. Vi and Tundo came into the room afterward, waiting for the returning members to get out of the way first before running to catch up with the two younger boys. Finally, Lexaeus walked into the tunnel, briefly talking to Luxord about the results of the mission before heading over toward the van.

"Hey, Lexaeus, you're coming too?"

"That's right," he answered. "The base should be safe enough without me, now that Xigbar, Xaldin, and Luxord have returned."

Lexaeus squeezed himself into the van, taking the driver's seat--as he, after all, was the only one of them who had any experience operating the Dimensional Hippievan. Vi and Tundo climbed into the side door and quickly moved into the back seats, while Roxas and Banbu each sat down in one of the two seats in the middle.

"Now," Lexaeus said, addressing the other members of his team, "This mission will be a first for all of you... a real Fangirl swarm."

"I want all of you to be careful--we don't know for sure what these Fangirls are capable of." He glanced back at Banbu for a few seconds.

"If, at any time, you feel that you won't be able to continue fighting," he continued, "Yell for help."

Tundo snickered, then quickly quieted down when he noticed that Lexaeus was now staring directly at him.

"I'm serious," the huge man said, looking away from Tundo. "If any of you reach a point in the mission where you are unable to fight, call on me. Don't try to fight beyond your limit."

Once everyone had put on their seatbelts, Lexaeus turned back toward the front windshield and started the van. At first, it shook and made a lot of noise like most vehicles, but then Lexaeus pressed another button on the van's control panel and everything changed.

First, the van began to roll forward slowly. With every second that passed, its speed increased; Tundo, Banbu, and Roxas's eyes all went wide with fear as the van suddenly broke the sound barrier and went speeding toward the light at the end of the tunnel. Vi, being a bit more calm than the others, simply latched tightly onto her seat and braced herself for the flight.

The van came flying out of the mountain at last, launching off into the air and going even faster than before. Finally, Lexaeus reached down and pressed another button. A beam of energy was projected from some device on top of the van, tearing open a portal in the air that rapidly expanded so that the bulky vehicle could fit through. Once the entirety of the van had passed through the portal, it closed up with a flash of energy, and it appeared that the van had completely vanished.

Instead, it was now hurtling through a bizarre space beyond the portal, with swirling colors all around it. Shapes of cities and landmarks below would occasionally flicker into existence, only to vanish again in a matter of seconds. Just when the younger members had finally gotten used to the strange void, the van passed through another portal and they found themselves back in normal space once again.

The van rolled to a stop just short of a cracked, yellow curb. They had landed in a parking lot, just a few yards in front of a massive, dome-roofed building that looked like it was probably used for concerts or conventions--both of which tended to attract large numbers of Fangirls.

"We're here," Lexaeus said, opening the driver's-side door of the van and letting it swing open. "From what the map showed, it seems that the Fangirl swarm is somewhere within that building."

The younger members unbuckled their seatbelts and hopped out of the van's side door, each of them summoning their weapons as they went. Two Japanese-style swords, one blade black and the other white, simultaneously flashed into existence in Roxas's hands. A streak of purplish-black energy swirled around one of Vi's hands before forming into the shape of a long paintbrush with a sharp-looking point on one end. Banbu held out his left hand, and thin streams of golden light seemed to drip from his fingers for a few seconds before solidifying into a yo-yo emblazoned with the Organization's symbol. And finally, a sphere of yellow-orange energy surrounded Tundo's raised hands with a deafening rush of sound, becoming progressively quieter as it condensed into an enormous hammer.

"I'll get the door."

Lexaeus raised his right hand toward the closest entrance and lowered his head slightly, seemingly concentrating on something. The ground in front of the door shifted and cracked, rattling all of the nearby doors and windows. The huge man closed his hand into a fist, and a slab of concrete uprooted itself from the sidewalk; when he thrust his hand forward, the chunk of sidewalk propelled itself into the door, instantly knocking it off of its hinges and sending it flying off into one of the interior walls of the building.

A chorus of strange, distorted-sounding squeals erupted from somewhere further into the building. Roxas grunted and paused in the middle of a step, his eyes widening slightly--he recognized those sounds. They were the voices of Fangirls.

"Those sounds you hear are Fangirls... you've heard them before, haven't you?"

Lexaeus glanced around to each of the younger Organization members, then nodded and took a small step toward the open door.

"Of course, all of you have... otherwise you would have never joined Organization XIII."

The giant of a man now summoned his weapon as well, reaching out his hand as if grabbing on to something just barely out of reach. Wisps of dark, reddish-orange energy surged up around his body for a moment, then encircled his arm; there was a bright flash, and the reddish energy was gone, replaced by a truly massive weapon with a black, axe-like blade. He hoisted his tomahawk up onto his shoulder, then began to give out orders to each of the other members of his team.

"Tundo and Vi, go in through the front door. Roxas and Banbu, jump up to the second floor and clear out any Fangirls you find," he said, using his free hand to point toward various parts of the building. "I will stay on this side and fight off any Fangirls who come to investigate all the noise."

* * *

Roxas and Banbu slipped through an open window, almost silently entering the second floor of the building. While they could hear the squeals of Fangirls in the distance, there didn't appear to be any in the immediate area. In fact, there didn't appear to be _anyone_ on the second floor...

The two kids heard small footsteps coming from around the next corner, and both of them froze in place. There were no Fangirlish voices to be heard, but that wasn't always an indication that none of the creatures were present--some of them were much more intelligent than others, and a few types even had the power to disguise themselves as normal humans.

After a few minutes, the footsteps finally reached the corner. Their source was not a Fangirl, but a young boy--probably no older than Roxas was, with a number of clawmark-shaped cuts in his shirt and some bleeding gashes beneath it. He appeared to have difficulty walking, and though he was barely ten feet away from them, he hadn't yet noticed the presence of the two Organization members.

"Whoa," Roxas said, lowering his weapons. "What happened to you? What're you doing here?"

The kid staggered slightly, grabbing onto the wall to keep himself from falling. He looked up at Roxas and Banbu, apparently not shocked at all by their odd clothes or the fact that they were carrying weapons.

"Wha... who're you guys supposed to be?", the kid muttered, "Some kind of weird Final Fantasy fan-characters? Those prop weapons look awful..."

The two cloaked boys stared at the injured kid for a second before remembering that the Organization and its activities were not well known to the general public. Only the highest levels of government in a handful of countries knew for sure that they even existed, and even they didn't know much beyond the basics.

"Uh, no, we're... uh... Organization XIII."

"Organization who? Never heard of it."

"Forget it," Roxas groaned. "Anyway, what happened to you? How'd you get all those nasty scrapes?"

The kid glanced down at his stomach, where one of the Fangirls' claws had shredded through his shirt and cut into the skin underneath. The wound had soaked the lower half of his shirt in blood, though the bleeding seemed to be slowing down a bit now.

"My girlfriend... we were walking around downstairs," he said, "That is, until she just stopped walking, and changed into this weird... _thing_..."

He sat down next to the wall, apparently too tired to stand anymore, then continued.

"And then my sister... she turned into another one of 'em... and they both chased me down one of the hallways."

"Hmm," Banbu said, spinning his yo-yo up and down in his hand as he listened to the other kid's story. "So... how did you manage to get away?"

"Well, I, uh... I had a Sephiroth sword made of duct tape, but then I dropped it, and... well, I jumped into an elevator and came up here."

From around the next corner, there was a quiet "ding!" and the sound of an elevator door sliding open. Almost immediately, Fangirlish squeals filled the second-floor hallway.

"Stay here," Roxas said, readying his twin katanas as he ran past the injured boy, "We'll make sure no more of those things get to you."

* * *

Back down on the first floor, Vi and Tundo had just walked through the front door. Unlike the one that Lexaeus had forced open earlier, the building's main entrance was not locked; this meant that the two were able to pass through without making much noise or alerting the Fangirls to their presence.

The two slowly began to walk through the front halls of the building, stopping just in front of a set of double-doors leading into a huge room. Inside, there were tables set up all over, with merchandise from various anime series set up on top of them. Costumes--well, mostly just _pieces _of costumes--and fake weapons littered the floor. Strange music, apparently in Japanese, was playing from the one speaker left intact; the other three speakers were lying on the floor in pieces, most likely either destroyed by the Fangirls or knocked over by other people in their rush to get out of the room. Several big-screen televisions were set up on a few of the tables, but none showed anything other than plain blue screens or black-and-white fuzz.

"Looks like we're too late," Vi whispered. "The Fangirls must have left this room when they heard Lexaeus make his entrance."

"Nah, there's no way they could've all cleared out that fast," Tundo said, looking around at the tables as he passed them. "There's gotta be a few of 'em still hanging around here _somewhere!_"

The dark-haired girl turned toward Tundo, planning to tell him to keep his voice down. Before she could say a word, however, a humanoid shape suddenly appeared behind the fat man, crawling out from underneath one of the tables and then standing up to its full height. It raised up one of its clawed hands, and a red glow began to form around its fingertips...

"Tundo! _DUCK!!_"

Vi leaped out of the way, knocking several volumes of manga off of a table as she went tumbling to the floor. Tundo ducked as quickly as possible, but it was not quite fast enough--a ball of flame burst forth from the Fangirl's hand and whizzed over his head, causing the top of his afro to catch fire.

The fat man stood back up, lightly patting his hair with his hammer until the flames were extinguished. He then turned to face the Fangirl that had almost pulled off a surprise attack on him.

"Oh yeah, I know what this is," he said, brandishing his hammer, "This here is a Flamer Fangirl... not too bright, but they're supposed to be pretty nasty fighters."

"You've got a few things in common," Vi mumbled, just barely loud enough to be heard.

The Fangirl charged, but before it could reach its tubby opponent, it was sent flying by a powerful side-swing of his hammer. Tundo got a running start and hopped over several tables, moving with surprising agility for his size and closing the distance between himself and the Fangirl before it had managed to stand up. He swung his hammer down, planning to smash the Fangirl with one powerful blow, but the creature rolled out of the way. Tundo's attack only managed to smash a few of the floor tiles, leaving a small crater behind and generating a shockwave that knocked some papers off of the tables nearby.

Tundo readied his hammer as the Fangirl rushed at him once again, but instead of attacking, it stopped for a moment before jumping high into the air above him. He swung his hammer wildly in an attempt to swat the creature out of the sky, but all of his strikes missed; the heavy weapon was just too slow to catch the Fangirl before it was out of his reach.

"I'll handle this one," Vi said, raising up her paintbrush and making some squiggly motions in midair. A dark purple fog began to form in the air above Tundo, and by the time the Fangirl had noticed, it was already coming back down too quickly to change direction. The purple fog suddenly darkened even further and solidified, creating what looked like a pitch-black trampoline that hovered in the air several feet above the top of Tundo's head.

_Sprrrroing!! _The Fangirl collided with the black trampoline feet-first, causing it to launch back upward with incredible speed. The creature's head smashed through the ceiling, knocking loose chunks of plaster which rained down on the room below. After a few seconds, it stopped moving and began to glow with a strange, greenish light before shattering into what appeared to be fragments of computer code.

The flurry of transparent zeros and ones filled the air for a moment before disintegrating away into nothing, leaving behind no trace of the Fangirl's existence.

* * *

Lexaeus stood perfectly still in front of the open doorframe, listening to the Fangirlish squeals in the distance as they came closer and closer to his position. He had not yet heard the sounds of combat from the other sections of the building--which meant that the majority of the Fangirl swarm was likely headed toward him.

He readied his tomahawk as the sounds of Fangirl footsteps reached his ears, stepping away from the door slightly and facing the corner of the hall where the swarm would soon arrive. Hardly a minute passed before the first wave came into view--a group of the common Glomper Fangirls, who used their elongated arms to latch onto their victims and drain away their energy.

"Hello," he said to the group as they stopped running and turned to face him for the first time. "I've been waiting for you."

The Glompers made faces of disgust, their dot-like eyes shifting into the shape of the letter "X" and their mouths contorting to resemble the letter "P." It was a well-known fact that, among Fangirls, Lexaeus was perhaps the least-liked member of the Organization. You see, Fangirls tend to be incredibly shallow creatures, and appearance has never exactly been one of Lexaeus's strong points.

"Ewww, it's that big oaf Lexaeus!", one of them shrieked, waving its abnormally long arms in the air.

"Darn! I wanted Axel or Zexion instead!"

"Or Marluxia, hee hee!"

Lexaeus smiled and raised his hand toward the vile creatures, preparing to flatten the lot of them with a single attack.

"Oh, I'm afraid Marluxia wouldn't be interested," he said, using his power over rocks to lift the crumbling slab of concrete once again. The Fangirls' faces twisted into looks of anger for just a second before they were all smashed against the wall by the flying chunk of sidewalk. Bright green light flooded the hallway, and then the Fangirls were no more.

* * *

Roxas stopped in the middle of the hallway and stared. He found himself faced with at least a dozen Fangirls, all squealing and shoving past each other in a mad dash to get out of the elevator and continue their chase.

"Hey, Banbu!", he called back toward his younger friend, "I think I might need a little help over here!"

Before any help could arrive, the Fangirls began their assault. A Flamer Fangirl, resembling a young girl with red hair tied back in a ponytail, thrust both of its clawed hands forward and sent a blast of fire in Roxas's direction. Roxas dodged and intercepted the attack with his twin katanas, slicing through the fireball so that it exploded harmlessly in midair rather than hitting the wall and catching fire to the building around them.

Two more Fangirls, this time of the Glomper variety, ran in a zig-zagging pattern toward the young warrior, jumping to tackle him at the last second with their arms outstretched. He hit the floor and rolled out of the way, causing the two Fangirls to collide in midair and become tangled up in each other's arms. Roxas jumped back to his feet and delivered a double slash to the Fangirls' midsections, ensuring that they wouldn't get another chance to grab at him--they glowed with green light for a second, then shattered and dissolved away.

Roxas failed to notice the presence of a third Glomper, which had somehow snuck behind him while he was concentrating on the first two, until it was too late. The Fangirl's arms entered his view for a split-second before clamping down around his chest, pinning his own arms down and preventing him from using his weapons.

"Arggh!"

He felt his power begin to drain away as the Fangirl tightened its grip, squealing and giggling all the while. Just when he thought he was starting to pass out, there was a loud _thwack! _and the Fangirl's grip instantly loosened.

Banbu tugged the string of his yo-yo, causing it to return to his hand so quickly that its movement could barely be seen. The Fangirl, now with a large, red welt on the side of its face, went flying into the wall and collapsed upon impact.

The creature struggled to stand up, digging its claws into the wall in order to regain its balance. Just as the third Glomper turned to face its newest opponent, Banbu's yo-yo came flying in again, smacking it right between the eyes and knocking it out cold. The youngest member of the Organization walked over to the unconscious Fangirl and slammed his weapon down into the back of the creature's neck, killing it almost instantly.

"And _stay down,_ this time!"

Roxas slumped to his knees as the Fangirl flashed and shattered, jabbing his twin swords into the floor to keep himself from falling even further. He was now breathing heavily--the Fangirl had drained his energy much faster than he had expected.

"Don't let those things touch you," he gasped in between breaths, glancing back and forth between Banbu and the remaining Fangirls. "You're too young... there's no way your body'd be able to handle an energy-draining attack like that."

Banbu shrugged slightly, paying more attention to the Fangirls than to Roxas.

"Don't worry about it," he said, swinging his yo-yo at the nearest group of Fangirls so that they would back away to avoid it, "It's not like I'm planning on getting in close to 'em or anything."

The younger boy continued swinging his weapon around at the Fangirls, backing them further and further away from the corner of the hallway where Roxas was standing. Somehow, the swarm had managed to avoid all of his attacks, but fortunately they were all too busy dodging to get in any attacks of their own.

Back at the corner of the hall, Roxas finally stood up and pulled his swords out of the floor.

"You're not even hitting them," he grumbled, watching as Banbu continued his flurry of attacks on the Fangirls.

"Yeah, I know," Banbu yelled. Pausing briefly between attacks, he turned back toward Roxas for a second and pointed up at the ceiling above the Fangirls.

Roxas ran to catch up with the boy and stared at the ceiling for a second, then got a confused look on his face.

"Huh? What were you pointing at? There's nothing there!"

"Not yet," Banbu said in between swings. "You're the one with the swords--carve open a sunroof for me!"

"A _sunroof?_ You've gotta be..."

Roxas stopped in mid-sentence, suddenly remembering something that Axel had mentioned before.

_"That Banbu kid? His power works a lot like Saix's. Doesn't seem all that tough at first, but once even a little bit of sunlight touches his weapon... watch out."_

* * *

Tundo and Vi wandered across the mostly-empty convention center, occasionally shoving tables aside in order to clear a path. Apparently, the chaos caused by the Fangirl outbreak had scared off all of the other convention-goers; the two were unable to find even a single person, living or dead, among the rows of tables.

"Think it's about time to go check another room?", Tundo asked, resting his hammer on one shoulder while he scratched his head.

Vi nodded, and pointed toward a door on the far side of the room that had been knocked off of its hinges and was covered in strange clawmarks.

"They may have moved on by now," she said, "But it looks like some of the Fangirls went that way."

Tundo shoved a big-screen TV out of the way and made a beeline for the door, not really paying much attention to anything in his way. Several times, he stubbed his toes on boxes and action figures that had fallen to the floor during the Fangirl attack; once, he almost tripped over an especially large toy robot.

"Dammit, who the hell left that thing there!?"

"Someone probably threw it at the Fangirls on the way out," Vi mumbled, glancing at what was left of the plastic robot after Tundo had nearly fallen on top of it. "Just watch where you're going... there's probably a lot more stuff like that lying around."

Eventually, after several more giant-robot accidents were narrowly avoided, the two Organization members reached the open door on the other side of the room. Vi peeked around the corner, then waved to Tundo, signifying that the hall outside seemed to be clear of Fangirls. Tundo bumped her out of the way and waddled through the door to take a look for himself.

"Hmm... yep, you're right. No Fangirls here."

Suddenly, there was a series of loud crashing sounds from the other side of the building, followed by the angry screams of dozens of Fangirls. Vi looked back across the room they had just left, but couldn't see anything--the door on the other side of the room was still closed.

"They must be concentrating on Lexaeus..."

"Heh, too bad for them," Tundo chuckled. "I don't think I've _ever_seen a Fangirl that could take a hit from Lexaeus."

A light breeze began to blow through the hallway, and Tundo stretched his arms, yawned, and leaned his hammer up against the wall. The breeze became stronger, and immediately Vi noticed something fishy about it.

"Tundo... don't let your guard down," she said, pinching one of his arms to snap him back to attention. "There weren't any doors or windows open on this end of the building when we came in."

* * *

Three waves of Glomper Fangirls had come forward to attack Lexaeus, and each group had ended up the same way--smashed against a wall by the slab of uprooted sidewalk concrete and instantly destroyed. Now, the concrete was beginning to break into smaller pieces, and there were still dozens of Fangirls remaining in the hallway.

Three Glompers jumped toward Lexaeus while another group began to circle around behind him, planning to attack from all sides to throw their opponent off balance. As expected, their plan failed spectacularly--just as the Fangirls were about to reach him, Lexaeus flexed his muscles and grunted, causing a wave of reddish-orange energy to flare up around him. The Fangirls were sent flying off in all directions, smashing into the walls and splattering into a shower of green light and computer code. The floor of the building shook for a few seconds afterward, forcing the remaining Fangirls to stop moving in order to keep themselves from falling over.

Lexaeus lifted his hand and aimed it toward the group of Fangirls filling the hallway, then quickly swung it to the side. The pieces of concrete that littered the floor rose up, then went flying down the hallway, ricocheting off the walls as they went. One fragment smashed into a Fangirl, then bounced off the wall and collided with a second one, crushing them both. A flurry of small pieces struck some of the creatures in the head, knocking them to the floor where they were soon trampled by their fellow Fangirls. When the concrete finally settled, nearly half of them were gone.

The huge man raised his tomahawk and stepped forward, preparing to finish off the last remaining Fangirls with his weapon in order to avoid causing any more unnecessary damage to the building around them. He was within three feet of the swarm when he noticed that something in the air had changed. An odd breeze had begun to blow through the hallway, and the Fangirls suddenly stopped moving and turned away from Lexaeus.

For several seconds, the creatures remained silent and unmoving, as if listening for some far-off sound that only they could hear. Lexaeus took another step toward them, and was amazed to find that even the Fangirls closest to him didn't react to his presence.

"What is this...?"

Slowly, the Fangirls began moving again, talking amongst themselves so quickly that Lexaeus was unable to make out any words. Finally, one of them turned back toward the Organization member and spoke up.

"Hee hee... we're taking a break, silly!", the creature giggled. "Our boss just arrived to finish this job for us, so we're done for today."

Lexaeus prepared to swing his weapon down on the Fangirl, but stopped in mid-swing when he noticed that a computer at the end of the hallway had turned on. He had seen this happen many times before--it was the way the Fangirls traveled, and how they could escape from the scene of a battle so quickly. By passing through the Internet itself, they became able to hop from one computer to another, teleporting halfway across the world in a matter of seconds.

One by one, all of the Fangirls were pulled into the computer's screen, which was filled by a bizarre, swirling pattern of pinks, whites, and reds that a computer as old as this one should not have been capable of displaying. Once they had all vanished into the depths of the Internet, the spiral pattern faded away, and the computer instantly shut down.

Lexaeus dematerialized his weapon, then slowly walked over to the computer, watching its screen for any signs of further Fangirl activity as he went. He crouched down next to the machine and carefully disconnected its power supply cord from the wall, ensuring that no more Fangirls would be coming through the Internet... at least for a little while.

* * *

While Banbu continued to swing away wildly at the Fangirls, Roxas went to work on the ceiling. He jumped up and jabbed one sword into it for support, then immediately began hacking away with the other, cleaving a good-sized chunk out of the wood and plaster above him. As the chopped-up portion of the ceiling began to creak and give way, Roxas dropped to the floor and rolled to the side just in time to avoid the falling debris.

Light flooded into the room through the makeshift sunroof, illuminating every last bit of plaster dust that filled the air. When the clouds of dust faded, Roxas and Banbu were standing side-by-side in front of the Fangirls, who were still wiping the dust out of their eyes and squealing angrily.

Banbu raised his yo-yo into the air, revealing that its shape had changed slightly--the string of golden energy that connected it to his hand was now a chain, with each link shaped like the spikes of the Organization's symbol. The symbol on the yo-yo itself had begun to glow slightly, and a faint aura now surrounded the entire weapon.

The Fangirls' faces shifted into expressions of anger, and they began to charge at the two boys. Banbu swung his yo-yo at the nearest one, smacking it in the jaw and sending it flying backward. A shockwave erupted from the point of impact, knocking two more Fangirls aside; before they were able to recover, they were sliced in half by Roxas' twin blades.

Another Glomper Fangirl stood up behind Roxas, but before it could latch onto him, a chain of energy whipped around its midsection and pulled it away. Banbu punched the creature in the face, then jumped up and kicked it in the chest with both feet, sending it spinning across the hallway and crashing to the floor. Another blow from the boy's yo-yo finished off the Fangirl, illuminating the hallway with an odd greenish-yellow light as the sun's rays and the green flash from the Fangirl's death mixed together.

The two cloaked boys backed away from the Fangirls for a second to catch their breath, readying their weapons for another wave of Fangirl assaults. However, the attack never came--instead, a light breeze drifted into the room, and the Fangirls seemed to freeze in place, staring off in some random direction and completely ignoring Roxas and Banbu.

On the other end of the hall, the wounded boy was sitting down and fiddling with a laptop computer. He nearly threw the computer up in the air when the screen suddenly changed into a rotating spiral of pink; a moment later, when he glanced up and saw Fangirls flying through the air toward him, he panicked and ran off down another hallway, leaving the computer behind. Each of the Fangirls entered the computer's screen and vanished, and then the pink whirlpool faded away, a simple Windows desktop reappearing in its place.

"Uh, Roxas?", Banbu asked, dematerializing his weapon and staring at the laptop as if he had never seen one before in his life. "Has anything like that _ever_ happened before?"

Roxas shrugged as he dematerialized his weapons as well, then walked over to the computer to get a closer look.

"I've never seen it before," he answered, "But Axel did say that these things can travel through the Internet... maybe that's what just happened."

"So they just... ran away? Since when do Fangirls run away?"

"Good question," Roxas mumbled, looking through the computer's files to see if they contained any clues. "Fangirls are supposed to be mindless zombies, pretty much... but these seemed a little different."

"Yeah... I wonder why they all just stopped moving like that?"

Roxas turned off the laptop and closed it, then sat it back down on the floor and turned to face Banbu again.

"They looked almost like they were listening to something," he said, thinking back to the way that the Fangirls all looked off in the same direction and ignored them. "But I couldn't hear anything except for..."

Banbu and Roxas both noticed, at exactly the same moment, the one suspicious thing that they hadn't considered before.

"The wind."

"I closed the window on the way in," Banbu pointed out, "So... there shouldn't be any wind blowing inside the building."

* * *

Back down on the first floor, the wind had grown even stronger. Vi's hair was now whipping around all over the place, making it difficult for her to see what was going on. Both of the Organization members' cloaks were flapping around like flags in the wind. Books, papers, and small toys from inside the convention center were being thrown about. Even Tundo's afro was moving--though it was only swaying back and forth a little.

"What the hell is this?"

"I... I don't know!", Vi said, raising her voice slightly for the first time while struggling to keep her hair out of her face. After a few seconds of grappling with the rogue hairs, she yanked all of it back and waved her paintbrush in the air above it, creating a black strip of cloth that tied it all back into a ponytail.

"But whatever it is," she continued, "I'm betting the Fangirls had something to do with it..."

On the other end of the hall, the wind seemed to be condensing into a miniature tornado. The ceiling above it began to crack slightly, and several floor tiles below it went flying off down the hall, forcing Vi and Tundo to jump out of the way to avoid them. The fluorescent lights that lit the hallways, mounted on the ceiling, flickered and went out one by one. And in the center of the swirling winds, two points of red light became visible, slowly revealing themselves... like eyes opening.

"Uh... Vi?", Tundo said, prodding the girl's shoulder with the handle of his hammer. "That sure doesn't look like any Fangirl _I've_ ever seen..."


	3. The Hurricane

**CHAPTER 2**  
_~ The Hurricane ~_

Naminé stared at the screen of the Fangirl Detection System computer, not sure exactly what she was seeing. In a matter of seconds, the vast majority of the Fangirls in the building--even those that were far away from any of the Organization members--had suddenly vanished, leaving only a single pink dot behind.

A tall man with short, spiky hair and a goatee stepped into the room and glanced at the screen, noticing the absence of Fangirl activity. He then burst out laughing.

"Zagan?", Naminé asked, turning away from the screen.

"Yep, I'm back. And that last map looks pretty empty," he said. "That last group finished the swarm off already, huh?"

"No," the little girl said, "All the Fangirls... just disappeared. It happened right before you came in."

Zagan adjusted his glasses and then sat down in one of the empty chairs, typing away rapidly at the keyboard in front of him. One of the maps--the now-empty one where Xigbar, Xaldin, and Luxord had been--vanished from the screen and was quickly replaced by a different program, with a progress bar slowly filling up along the bottom.

"I'm going to try and run a scan of that building."

Naminé nodded, then turned back toward the computer screen and waited for it to finish. After typing in a few more things and clicking something with the mouse, Zagan leaned back in his seat as he waited for the program to load.

"This should let us know a little more about what's going on in there," he said, glancing at the three maps for a second before continuing. "And maybe tell us something about that one last Fangirl that _didn't_ disappear..."

* * *

The sound of rushing wind filled the entire building, shattering windows and sending loose objects flying everywhere as it grew even stronger. This kept up for several seconds before finally the wind stopped, leaving the hallways of the convention center eerily silent... until all the junk that the wind had picked up came crashing back down to the floor.

On the other end of the hallway, the swirling winds around the mysterious new Fangirl had begun to slow down. Standing in the center of the tornado was a humanoid shape, with similar proportions to the other Fangirls the Organization had encountered but much taller. In one hand, it held what appeared to be a wooden staff, which it was spinning rapidly above its head. The other hand was larger, and each finger was tipped with a long, razor-sharp claw.

Finally, the Fangirl stopped twirling its staff-like weapon, and the whirlwind around it vanished. It was then that the staff's true identity was revealed--it was not a staff, but a flag. Hanging from the end of it was a sqaure of pink and white cloth, with a strange code printed in bold, black letters: "8 x 13."

"Oh God," Vi muttered, staring with a look of horror at the message on the flag. "_Please_ tell me that doesn't mean what I think it means..."

The Fangirl just giggled creepily in response, raising the flag toward them as if it were a weapon and flexing its clawed hand. Several of its claws scraped together, making a series of metallic clinking sounds as they went.

"Looks like we've got a Yaoinator Fangirl here," Tundo blurted out, walking past Vi to get a closer look at the monster. "Well, almost... that claw-hand thing is new, and it's a little bigger than they're supposed to be."

He raised up his massive hammer and pulled back, preparing to smack the creature before it even had a chance to attack.

"Kinda disappointing, y'know... after that big trick with the wind, I thought this one'd be a little more impressive."

Tundo slammed his hammer down, only to find that his target was no longer there. It reappeared behind him in an instant, slapping him across the back with its flag and sending the fat man tumbling to the floor. He stood up a second later, visibly stunned.

"Oof... wasn't expectin' that one..."

He cracked his neck and lifted his hammer a few times, then ran in for another attack. This one didn't go over much better than the last--the Fangirl suddenly vanished, then clobbered him over the head with the pole of its flag, sending him crashing down once again.

"Direct attacks aren't any good," Vi said, waving her paintbrush in the air as she spoke. "It's too fast... we'll have to try something different."

She pointed her weapon at the Fangirl, then lifted it up slightly. A black fog appeared around it, then instantly solidifed into handcuffs that snapped shut on the creature's wrists. As Tundo came in from the side, the Fangirl struggled with the handcuffs for a few seconds... and then stopped moving and only giggled.

As he swung his hammer, the Fangirl hopped backward just far enough that its body was out of range. The heavy weapon slammed into the black chains that held the handcuffs together, shattering them instantly and freeing their prisoner. Before either Tundo or Vi could react, the Fangirl started to spin its flag around in front of it, generating a burst of wind that knocked both of them off of their feet.

The creature let out another creepy giggle, watching as its two opponents were slammed to the floor. It stopped spinning its flag, then glanced at the message on the cloth for a second. Vi and Tundo slowly pulled themselves up off of the ground, and an evil grin spread across the Fangirl's face as it turned to face them...

* * *

Roxas and Banbu ran down the second-floor hallway at full speed, looking for any sign of stairs leading downward as they went.

"We've gotta find Lexaeus," Roxas said in between breaths, "He should be able to figure out what's going on..."

The two boys went around a corner and ran down another hallway, passing a pile of mangled prop weapons and a wall covered in Fangirl clawmarks. As they passed a second elevator on their way to the stairs, Banbu turned toward Roxas and asked a simple question.

"Why can't we just use the elevator?"

The answer was even simpler.

"Too slow."

Roxas reached the top of the stairs and hopped up over the handrails, clearing the entire stairwell in a single jump and landing right in the middle of the bottom step. Banbu didn't even attempt to duplicate the other boy's stunt, taking a much safer route (running down the stairs three steps at a time) instead.

Almost as soon as they had reached the bottom of the stairs, they heard heavy footsteps around the next corner. Seconds later, Lexaeus came into view; though he still looked quite a bit calmer than the two younger Organization members, it was clear that the sudden retreat of the Fangirls was bothering him as well.

The huge man took another few strides across the hallway, then stopped in front of Roxas and Banbu, who were both still standing on the bottom step of the staircase.

"I take it the Fangirls in your hallway disappeared as well?"

"Yeah," Banbu said, "They stopped moving for a little while, and then they all flew into some guy's computer."

Lexaeus nodded, then began to walk over to the doorway leading into the main room of the convention center. After he opened the double-doors, Roxas and Banbu soon followed.

"You already know that Fangirls travel through the Internet," he said, holding the doors open for his two young comrades. "But this was different... a whole swarm never retreats from a battle all at once like this."

"We should find Vi and Tundo," he continued, following the boys through the double-doors and into the open room behind them. "And quickly. I suspect that this swarm's retreat was only a sign that something far worse is coming..."

* * *

A loud _beep!_ erupted from the Fangirl Detection System, causing both Zagan and Naminé to sit upright in their chairs and stare at the screen. The scanning program was finished, and the computer was now loading the results of the scan.

A tall, humanoid shape appeared on the screen, first showing up as nothing more than a wireframe model and then being filled-in with various colors. Along the side of the figure, a list of symbols and numbers popped up, accompanied by labels such as "Intelligence," "Speed," and "Fangirlism Level." Zagan quickly read over the statistics, and his jaw dropped upon reaching the last one in the list.

"Forty-three!?", he yelled, standing up in his seat and barely managing to keep himself from pounding the table in front of him with both hands. "This thing has a Fangirlism Level of _forty-three!?_"

Naminé shivered. The average Fangirl registered a Fangirlism Level of around five, and the highest level she had ever seen on the computer's scanner before was only twelve; this one was almost four times as powerful.

"Look," she said, pointing toward the screen. "The rest of the information's coming up now."

"Hmm... Fangirl type: unknown Yaoinator variant... origin: unknown," Zagan mumbled, reading over the scanner's results. "And it's a wind-elemental, too... definitely not anything I've ever seen."

"That one wasn't there before," Naminé noted, remembering the list that had popped up on the screen when the computer had first detected the swarm. "There weren't any Fangirlism Levels higher than seven."

Zagan stroked his beard for a second, looking over the Fangirl's information one more time. Finally, he sat back down and closed the scanning program.

"This's definitely a strange one," he said, "I guess there's really no way to know what's going on down there..."

Naminé turned and looked up at Zagan's face, looking concerned.

"Do you think Roxas and the others will be okay?"

He laughed, then reached over with one hand and ruffled the little girl's hair.

"Will they be _okay?_ Lexaeus is out there with them, remember?" He turned back toward the screen and watched as the silvery Organization symbols moved across the building, all heading toward the location of the last Fangirl. "I wouldn't be surprised if they all come back without a scratch."

* * *

Vi and Tundo were both thrown into a wall by another blast of wind, nearly dropping their weapons from the force of the impact. As they struggled to get back up, the Fangirl began to walk down the hallway toward them, spinning its flag around slowly as it went.

Tundo stood up, using his hammer as a crutch, and wiped his face; his nose was slightly bloodied now, and he could already tell that some nasty bruises would be showing up on his rear and back later. He stopped for a second to catch his breath, then hefted his weapon up onto his shoulder and prepared for the next attack.

Just a few feet away, Vi had also managed to stand up; her hair had broken out of its makeshift hairband and her face had a few small cuts from shards of tile that had been kicked up from the last gust of wind, but otherwise she appeared to be unharmed. She swiped her paintbrush toward the Fangirl, making a series of rapid motions in midair, then jumped to the side, expecting it to counter with a blast of wind before her attack could take shape.

No counterattack ever came; the Fangirl just walked closer and giggled quietly. Its face was still plastered with the same evil grin that it had before the last attack, and its eyes seemed to be glowing even brighter than they were before.

Tundo took a deep breath, then let out a deafening yell.

"_LEXAAAAEEEEUUUUS!! GET OVER HERE!_"

The blast served as both an attack and a call for help, all rolled into one--and the Fangirl never saw it coming. The waves of amplified sound smashed into the creature at full force, sending it flying backward down the hallway and causing its flag to flap about wildly. Once it had crashed to the floor, Vi's black mist finally solidified, creating bowling balls, anvils, and all sorts of other heavy objects that hung in the air above the creature for a split-second before plummeting downward.

For a minute, the other end of the hall was filled with a cloud of dust that would have been hard to see through even without the help of the black, inky mist from Vi's attack. If the Fangirl had survived, it certainly wasn't in a rush to show it; the hall was entirely silent, aside from the heavy breathing of the two worn-out Organization members.

"Huh," Tundo mumbled, "Looks like ya flattened it."

"I don't think so," Vi said, lowering her paintbrush and stopping to catch her breath before continuing. "No green light means... it's still alive."

* * *

Lexaeus pushed tables and other random junk aside, clearing the way for Roxas and Banbu as the three walked across the cluttered room. Just like the other rooms, this one was completely clear of both Fangirls and normal people, though it seemed that a bit of fighting had happened there earlier--Roxas noticed a small hole in the ceiling, and there were a few sections of the floor with cracked or missing tiles.

"Hey," Banbu said, getting the attention of the others and then pointing across the room. "That door over there looks pretty messed-up."

Lexaeus and Roxas glanced over at the door just in time to see a tall, thin Fangirl with glowing red eyes walk past it, carrying a flag and spinning it around slowly. Before anyone could comment on the new Fangirl's sudden appearance, Tundo's voice (even louder than usual, thanks to his sound-based powers) blasted out from the hallway, forcing them to cover their ears.

The Fangirl went flying backward past the door, smashing into the floor a few feet further down the hallway. Immediately afterward, there were a series of metallic crashes out in the hall, as if some heavy objects were being dropped onto it; once these sounds stopped and the ringing in the the three Organization members' ears finally went away, the room was completely silent.

"Using a call for help as an attack," Lexaeus said, shaking his head slightly and smiling. "Only Tundo would try something like that..."

* * *

Out in the hallway, the cloud of dust suddenly parted as the Fangirl came flying out, spinning through the air like a tornado toward Vi and Tundo. The two dove out of the way, but not quite far enough to avoid being hit--as the Fangirl reached them, it stopped and swung its flag in a circle, slamming both of them and sending them skidding across the floor.

Tundo groaned and tried to stand up, but ended up collapsing to the floor once again, dropping his hammer in the process. Vi was lying motionless on the floor a few feet away; her paintbrush had fallen out of her limp hand, and was quickly surrounded by purplish-black energy before disappearing entirely.

The Fangirl's face warped into that same evil grin once again as it turned and began to walk back toward Tundo. He tried to get up, but only managed to pull himself to his knees, leaning on his hammer just to keep from slumping down again.

"Y'know, Lexaeus and the others're gonna be here any minute," the fat man said, coughing a few times before continuing. "When those guys get in here... you're toast."

The creature didn't respond, unless another creepy giggle counts as a response. It continued to walk toward him, raising its flag up as it did and stopping just a few feet short of its pudgy opponent. Three pairs of footsteps began to approach the hallway, and Tundo turned toward the doorway--Lexaeus, Roxas, and Banbu were shoving tables out of the way in the convention center's main room, running to get there before things got any worse.

They reached the hallway just in time to see things get _a lot_ worse. The Fangirl raised its flag over Tundo's head and waved it in circles, causing an aura of purplish light to drift down over the fat man's body. For a moment, his eyes flashed red, then they faded back to their normal color. The purple light appeared to sink into Tundo's skin, and then the Fangirl moved the flag away from his head and grinned at the three newcomers.

"Roxas and Banbu... stay away from Tundo," Lexaeus said, summoning his tomahawk once again as he passed through the doorway. "There's no way to tell what he might do now that the Fangirl has him under its power."

The two boys nodded, then summoned their weapons in mid-step as they charged at the Fangirl. Banbu's yo-yo missed the creature's head by a few inches; as he backed off to prepare for another attack, Roxas jumped forward and slashed at the Fangirl's arm with one of his twin swords. His attack was knocked aside by the flagpole, and when he tried to attack again, the Fangirl grabbed his sword by the blade and threw the weapon (and its owner) into a nearby wall.

Tundo stood up and looked at Lexaeus, making a strange face at the huge man. He slowly began to walk over toward him, but was distracted by the sight of Roxas flying through the air past him and slamming into a wall. His eyes flashed red for a split-second and, ignoring Lexaeus, he began to waddle toward the young boy instead.

Roxas got up and rubbed his head, then leaped past Tundo and headed in for another attack on the Fangirl. Banbu took another swipe at the Fangirl's head, this time only missing by a fraction of an inch; he dove to the floor and slid out of the way as it swung the flag at him, then whipped his weapon toward one of its legs. This managed to distract the Fangirl just long enough for Roxas to get a hit in--he brought down one sword on each of the creature's shoulders, cutting several inches into its flesh before it began to shriek in pain.

The Fangirl raised up one of its legs and kicked Roxas square in the stomach, sending him tumbling backward and falling flat on his back. His swords remained embedded in its shoulders, and a bit of purplish blood began to ooze out of the two wounds. Banbu tried another attack, but the Fangirl just batted his weapon away with its clawed hand and then kicked him to the floor as well.

The two boys stood up, now several feet away from the Fangirl, and prepared for another attack; before they got a chance, it suddenly disappeared from view.

"Behind you!"

Lexaeus' warning didn't come quite fast enough. Before Roxas and Banbu had a chance to turn around or get out of the way, the Fangirl reappeared behind them and began spinning rapidly, generating strong winds that filled the hallway and sent the two boys flying. Tundo, completely oblivious now that he was under the Fangirl's spell, toppled over onto his back and skidded across the floor for a while; even Lexaeus had to brace himself in order to keep from sliding back a little.

The winds continued until they pulled both of Roxas' swords out of the Fangirl's body; the two blades went spinning down the hallway like oversized shuriken, only stopping when Lexaeus swatted them out of the air with his tomahawk. The swords became embedded in the floor, and after a few more seconds, the wind finally stopped.

Tundo got up and began to waddle toward Lexaeus again, making a goofy face and stretching out his arms like a little kid asking for a hug. The giant just shook his head and watched as the man with the afro continued to come closer. Once Tundo was within an arm's length, Lexaeus made his move.

"This might hurt a bit," he said, raising up one of his fists, "But it's for your own good."

Moving far faster than someone his size could be expected to move, Lexaeus smacked Tundo once in the back of the head. He was knocked out instantly, falling to the ground butt-first before flopping onto his back. His hammer began to glow with yellowish-orange energy for a second after he hit the ground, then flickered and vanished.

* * *

Naminé and Zagan watched the computer screen carefully as the Organization symbols and the pink dot moved back and forth within the building's far-right hallway, trying to imagine exactly what was going on inside. It was clear that all five members present in the building were now fighting the lone Fangirl, but unfortunately the computer couldn't tell them much more than that; a complete scan would take so long that the fight would probably be over before it was finished, and the system could only pick up a limited amount of information without running one.

"Vi and Tundo aren't moving," Naminé said, pointing out their symbols on the map. The symbol representing Vi, a silvery-colored Organization symbol with a black paintbrush in front of it, had not moved from its location for several minutes now; Tundo's, which had a yellowish hammer in the center of the standard Organization emblem, had only just now stopped moving.

"Well, this is a Level 43 Fangirl we're talking about, here," Zagan said, bringing up the results from the scanning program once again. "Those two haven't even been sent out to take care of a regular swarm before... it's no surprise that they wouldn't last long against something like that."

The little girl nodded slightly, then just stared down at the keyboard in front of her.

"I hope they're okay..."

* * *

The two boys stood up once again, brushing dust and shards of floor tile off of their cloaks as they watched the Fangirl walk down the hallway toward them. Roxas glanced down at his hands, and finally the fact that he had been disarmed began to sink in--without his swords, he was virtually helpless, and it didn't seem like Banbu was much of a match for this bizarre Fangirl either.

"C'mon, Roxas," Banbu said, nudging the slightly-older boy with his elbow, "Just dematerialize your swords, then bring 'em back."

Roxas turned and stared at him for a second, surprised that such a recent addition to the Organization already knew how to quickly recover lost weapons without having to actually go after them. He then nodded and closed his eyes, concentrating on the energy that made up his twin katanas. They flickered for a second, disappeared in a flash of light, and then immediately reappeared in his hands.

"When'd you learn about that?", Roxas whispered. The younger boy just shrugged in response. Apparently, he had picked it up on his own a while back, but never bothered to tell anyone.

The Fangirl raised its flag and began to spin it slightly, snapping both Roxas and Banbu back to attention. Banbu ran forward and swung his yo-yo in a wide arc, wrapping its string of energy around the flag; while the Fangirl was busy trying to throw the small boy off, Roxas charged.

At first, it appeared that he was just going to slash at the Fangirl's arm, and it moved to the side a bit in order to avoid that kind of attack. Instead, Roxas jumped, clearing the Fangirl easily and spinning in midair so that he was facing its back when he landed. He immediately threw the black-bladed sword at the Fangirl's arm, narrowly missing it. Before the creature could react, he ran past it and sliced one of its hands off with the white-bladed sword, catching the first weapon as it came spinning back like a boomerang.

The Fangirl screamed, rattling what was left of the windows and even shattering a few that were still intact. Its severed hand, along with the flag that it held, fell to the ground; while the flag just rolled around a little before bumping into a wall and stopping, the hand was instantly destroyed in a flash of greenish light.

Banbu rushed in from behind and swung his weapon at the Fangirl's head, but he was sent flying back by an swirling aura of wind that suddenly surged up around its entire body. Apparently, severing the hand was not enough to weaken the Fangirl... but it did a great job of pissing it off.

Roxas barely managed to turn around before the creature was upon him, raising up its clawed hand and then plunging it down toward the boy's midsection. He made an attempt to block with both of his weapons, but all the strength he was able to put into this last-second defense was easily pushed aside by the Fangirl's attack. This time, he was not sent flying--he was held in the air, suspended from the Fangirl's claws which had pierced his chest.

Immediately, Roxas felt the strength drain out of his body. His vision blurred, then faded in and out several times. His arms felt heavy, though he somehow managed to keep his grip tight enough to avoid dropping his weapons. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Lexaeus readying his weapon and charging toward the Fangirl; at the other end of the hall, Banbu struggled back to his feet and adjusted his hat before gasping as he noticed what had happened.

As Roxas slipped away into unconsciousness, he caught a glimpse of two large, familiar-looking blue eyes. And then, everything went black.

* * *

Tears began to well up in the corners of Naminé's eyes as she watched the computer screen, noticing that Roxas had stopped moving just inches away from the Fangirl and Banbu seemed to be weakening as well. Zagan frowned slightly and adjusted his glasses again, but said nothing.

"They'll be okay... right?", the little girl asked, tugging on Zagan's sleeve slightly. Zagan turned toward her, but unfortunately his face wasn't very reassuring--his eyes were completely obscured by his reflective glasses, and his mouth was still locked into a worried frown.

"Well... Lexaeus should be able to handle everything," he said, glancing back and forth between the screen and Naminé. "It looks like he's heading for the Fangirl right now... so Roxas should make it out of there okay."

Naminé sniffed slightly, then turned back toward the screen. The Organization symbol signifying Lexaeus was, indeed, rushing toward the Fangirl's location; Banbu was heading that way as well, though he seemed to be moving a lot slower than before. But what stood out the most to her was Roxas' symbol, which was doing something extremely strange.

"Look," she said, pointing to the screen, "His number... it's flickering in and out..."

Zagan immediately focused his attention on the screen, but it didn't show much more than what Naminé's description had told him--the white Roman numeral "XIII" that represented Roxas, located in the center of a silver Organization symbol, was flashing in and out of existence rapidly, and occasionally even changing color.

"What does that mean?"

"I... I really don't know," Zagan stuttered. "The system's set up to flash the symbols red whenever someone's in danger of dying, but... this is something completely different. I've never seen anything like it."

He leaned forward in his seat, nearly bumping the keyboard with his chest as he stared intently at Roxas' symbol as his number flickered away, reappeared, shifted from white to black, and then vanished again.

"I... really don't think the system's programmed to do anything like this..."

* * *

Lexaeus skidded to a stop just a few feet short of the Fangirl and raised his tomahawk, preparing to finish it off while it was distracted--and before its claws could do any more damage to its young hostage. He stopped in mid-swing when he noticed something extremely unusual--Roxas' eyes opened. And he was moving, despite the fact that he had almost certainly sustained an injury to at least one vital organ.

The young boy's face twisted slightly, taking on a look of rage; his arms suddenly seemed to regain their former strength as he slashed upward with both swords, severing the Fangirl's arm and sending it flying up into the air. The clawed hand, torn away from its arm by the sheer force of the attack, remained in his chest for a second before flashing green and then disappearing. The seemingly-fatal wound left behind spurted blood for a split-second, but then mysteriously stopped.

Roxas was completely silent as he tore into the Fangirl with such ferocity that even Lexaeus was forced to just step aside and watch. A second double-slash removed the Fangirl's other arm, and the series of blows that followed almost shredded the Fangirl's chest, leaving deep slashes everywhere they connected. The Fangirl stumbled backwards, clearly not expecting anything like this from a little boy that appeared to be near death a minute earlier.

Seemingly not even pausing to take a breath, Roxas continued his onslaught, spinning and slashing at the Fangirl so quickly that it was almost sent flying. He then raised both of his katanas high above his head before plunging them downward into the Fangirl's chest. A pillar of light erupted from the ground beneath them, shattering the floor tiles as it appeared and boring a hole through the ceiling above him as it went.

By the time the light faded, the Fangirl had already shattered into millions of tiny computer-code fragments, leaving behind only a dim green glow as it went.

As soon as all evidence of the Fangirl's existence was gone, Roxas' eyes slipped shut once again. His weapons flashed out of existence as he collapsed, his angry facial features softening into a slight smile just before he hit the floor...


	4. Siesta

**CHAPTER 3**  
_~ Siesta ~_

In one room of the Organization's mountain base, a small crowd had gathered around a trio of hospital beds. Two of the beds were occupied by Vi and Tundo, who had sustained some minor injuries and still felt a bit woozy, but were in good shape otherwise. It was the third bed, where Roxas was sleeping, that most of the room's visitors had focused their attention on.

The attack that pierced the boy's chest somehow managed to miss his heart and lungs, but several of his bones had been shattered and he had lost quite a bit of blood. Hours had passed since his battle with the last Fangirl swarm had ended, but still Roxas had not regained consciousness.

Lexaeus stood between Vi and Tundo's beds, listening to them as they talked about how they were doing after the battle and (in Tundo's case, at least) complained about having to stay in the hospital beds so long. Naminé sat in a small chair next to Roxas' bed, just staring at him as he slept.

Carefully pushing a few lower-ranked members aside, a pink-haired man approached the young boy's bed with a bottle of some strange liquid and several fresh bandages. He dabbed small amounts of the liquid onto Roxas' wounds, then wrapped some of the bandages around his chest, covering up the blood-soaked layer of older bandages.

"Marluxia," Lexaeus said, addressing the pink-haired man. "How is he?"

"Well, it's a little strange," he answered, "That wound seems like it should have been fatal... but he stabilized within the first half-hour. And now, he's even started to heal."

Lexaeus glanced down at Roxas for a second. Despite the location of the wound, the amount of blood loss was surprisingly small, and he seemed to have already stopped bleeding. He almost expected the boy to suddenly spring awake, asking everyone why they're all sitting around watching him sleep.

"I did manage to repair most of his bones... but it'll be a while before he'll be in good enough shape for any more fighting." "Have you been able to discover anything about the surge of power he displayed before collapsing?"

Marluxia shook his head, then walked over and put his medical supplies back into a cabinet nearby before answering.

"Afraid not... physically at least, nothing really seems to be out of the ordinary."

The pink-haired man watched over Roxas for a few seconds, pushing away a few lower-ranked members that got a bit too close to the injured boy before stepping away from the bed and toward Lexaeus.

"Well, other than his rate of healing, anyway. I'm sure Vexen will be able to figure out something more... once Roxas makes it back to full health."

* * *

Another hour passed before Roxas finally began to stir. By this point, the crowd around the hospital beds had dwindled down to only six; the absence of curious younger members trying to get a closer look at Roxas' injuries made Marluxia's job a whole lot easier.

On one side of the room, Marluxia continued to watch Roxas, making sure he was recovering at a normal rate. Lexaeus still stood between the hospital beds and waited, occasionally talking to Marluxia or the others. Vi and Tundo, still restricted to their beds, were now munching away at a few trays of food that Banbu had brought in for them. And finally, Naminé sat quietly in her tiny chair, watching Roxas as he slept while scribbling away at a pad of drawing paper on her lap.

Roxas' eyes slowly flickered open, and he let out a loud yawn which quickly transformed into a pained grunt when he discovered that it hurt quite a bit to yawn with his chest in its current state. Naminé suddenly looked up from her drawing, gasping slightly.

"Roxas?", Marluxia asked, walking over to the side of the bed and standing next to Naminé's chair. "How are you feeling?"

The boy paused, coughed a few times, and then spoke.

"I saw her," he said, apparently not even noticing that he had been asked a question. "Before I passed out during the fight... I saw her eyes."

Tundo sat up in his bed, almost knocking over what little was left on his food tray in the process.

"Huh? Whaddya mean, 'her?'"

"Xion," Roxas responded, not even turning to face the fat man. "But... that's not possible. She's been gone for months now."

"I don't remember anyone named Xion," Vi said, carefully setting her tray off to the side before sitting upright. "But, then again... I've only been in the Organization for about six months now."

"Yeah," Banbu spoke up, "I've never heard of her either."

Marluxia and Lexaeus seemed confused as well, though they both knew exactly who Xion was. Seeing someone's eyes could have just been a hallucination caused by unconsciousness coming on, but something about it felt strange--too strange for such a mundane explanation.

"Roxas," Lexaeus said, causing the boy to turn toward the huge man. "When you saw Xion's eyes... was this before or after you destroyed the Fangirl?"

A strange look came over Roxas' face.

"I... I destroyed the Fangirl?", he asked, looking completely lost. "I don't remember... I thought you must have jumped in and finished it off after I passed out."

Lexaeus frowned slightly. Roxas hadn't taken any blows to the head, so he should not have sustained any memory loss. He was clearly in control of his body during his enraged counterattack on the Fangirl... but somehow, he hadn't remembered any of it.

"I'll have Vexen come in and scan you as soon as you're healthy," Marluxia said, walking past the hospital beds. "If anything weird is going on, he should be able to figure it out."

Suddenly, Naminé closed her sketchbook and stood up, walking after Marluxia.

"Vexen doesn't have to wait until Roxas recovers," she said, tugging on the pink-haired man's sleeve and causing him to turn around.

"What do you mean? It wouldn't be safe to do it before he's fully healed..."

"Not Roxas... the computer records," she said. "I was watching the Fangirl Detection System while he was fighting... his symbol was doing something strange right before the Fangirl died."

Marluxia turned and looked down at the little girl, appearing to be almost surprised.

"I hadn't thought of that," he almost whispered. "Zagan usually saves all the records from Fangirl infestations, especially major swarms like these... so everything that happened should still be on record."

Lexaeus stepped in front of Marluxia, blocking his passage out of the room.

"I'll inform Vexen," he said, "You should concentrate on our wounded members for now."

"And Roxas," he added before leaving the room, "It would be wise to tell the newer recruits about Xion before this goes any further."

* * *

Vexen scowled slightly and looked up from the microscope, surprised by Lexaeus' sudden presence in his lab. For hours, nobody had so much as walked past his door; even the younger members that occasionally snuck in to steal avocados from his refrigerator were nowhere to be seen. Needless to say, the old scientist had not been expecting any visitors to come in and interrupt his work.

"Hmm? Lexaeus?", he asked, "What are you doing down here?"

Noticing the serious expression on the huge man's face, Vexen hurriedly put away the supplies that cluttered the lab table, carefully slipping the slide out of his microscope before putting them both back into a nearby cabinet.

Lexaeus waited for the older man to finish before finally speaking.

"As you may have already guessed, this is rather important. Several very strange things happened during our battle with the fourth Fangirl swarm today."

He held open the door as Vexen left the lab, then followed him down the hallways and up the stairs as they both headed toward the room that housed the Fangirl Detection System.

"First of all, today's Fangirls displayed some very unusual behavior compared to the swarms we've seen before."

Vexen stopped and raised his eyebrows slightly, then began to walk faster, easily keeping up with Lexaeus. Apparently, even the vague suggestion of a change in Fangirl behavior was enough to gain his interest.

"What sort of behavioral changes are you talking about, exactly?", the scientist asked, staying close to Lexaeus so that he wouldn't miss any details. "Has their intelligence increased at all since last year?"

"They appeared to have developed some sort of hierarchy."

Vexen stroked his chin and nodded, looking interested. More likely than not, he had already started thinking of new experiments to perform the next time someone brought a live Fangirl specimen back to his lab.

"The lower Fangirls all suddenly retreated upon the arrival of a more powerful individual. They even referred to it as their 'boss.'"

"Ah," Vexen said, "So some Fangirls have begun to take positions of power and issue orders to others... I'll have to study this further, if we ever discover exactly how they communicate."

Lexaeus nodded, choosing not to mention the strange wind which the Fangirl swarm reacted to just yet. He knew by now that if Vexen became focused on the topic of Fangirl communication, the old scientist would go on for hours before he'd be able to get a word in about anything else.

"And this final Fangirl was the second oddity we encountered," Lexaeus added as the two reached the bottom step of another staircase. "It had somehow managed to reach a level of power we haven't seen from them in over a year."

They climbed the stairs, finally reaching the floor where the Fangirl Detection System's room was located.

"Specifically... it appeared to be nearly as powerful as the one that caused the death of our original Number Thirteen."

Vexen stopped just short of the room's entrance and turned toward Lexaeus, his eyes wide.

"_That _Fangirl... I thought it was just a freak mutation, the kind of thing we wouldn't see again for another decade at least. Are you sure another one has appeared so soon?"

"I'm afraid so."

"And it just _had _to be Number Thirteen who was injured," Vexen groaned, reaching up to open the door. "No doubt that some of our more superstitious new recruits are already assuming that the number is 'bad luck,' or some other such nonsense..."

The two entered the room, which was completely empty--even Zagan, who usually operated the computer systems, was nowhere to be seen. Lexaeus turned to Vexen once again, and informed him of one last thing that happened during their mission.

"Speaking of Number Thirteen... the third and final oddity was Roxas himself."

"Roxas?", Vexen said. "But... what's so strange about him?"

"During the battle with the last Fangirl, he was impaled by the creature's claws... he fell unconscious, but then suddenly reawakened and destroyed the Fangirl."

Lexaeus took a step toward the chairs, then continued.

"That, in itself, is not especially strange... but when Marluxia and I talked to him in the sickbay afterward, we discovered that he had no memory of anything after the point when he first passed out. He didn't even realize that he _had_destroyed the Fangirl until we told him."

Vexen and Lexaeus sat down in the large chairs in front of the computer, glancing at the one map that remained. It appeared that Axel, Demyx, and Zexion had not quite finished with their swarm, though it wouldn't be long--the last remaining Fangirls had formed small groups scattered across the area, and there was at least one Organization member headed toward each one.

"And what's more," Lexaeus continued after sitting down, "Roxas' fighting style suddenly changed after that point. He was completely silent. The way he walked was different than before. He even held his weapons differently..."

"It was as if he had become an entirely different person, just long enough to finish off the Fangirl."

* * *

Deep within the very core of the Internet, a single dark figure suddenly flashed into existence.

For several minutes, the figure walked along a bridge of flickering energy which looked as if it could vanish at any instant. If it had, he would have plunged down hundreds of feet into the raging river below--not water, but a blur of black and white text, going by so quickly that it would be impossible for anyone to read.

Finally, he reached the end of the bridge. A massive white globe rose up out of the void in front of him, completely blocking out his view of anything beyond it. He raised his hand to the outer wall of the sphere, and a small rectangular door opened up in the side of the structure.

He ducked down slightly and entered, then walked several feet across the semi-solid mass of energy that made up the floor. As something else began to appear in the room, he dropped to his knees and bowed.

This being, very much unlike the first, did not appear all at once. Instead, many-colored sparks of energy came together from all directions, condensing into tiny points of light one at a time and stacking up in the center of the room until they formed a much larger shape. At first, it appeared to be made up of many small spheres, like a pixellated image on a computer screen; then, they all pushed in even closer, eliminating all space in between them and fusing into a single entity.

Several seconds passed. The only sound to be heard in the room was the incessant blabbering of pop-up ads in the distance, and even those ever-present nuisances seemed to be miles away. Finally, as the tentacled horror finally solidified in front of him, the dark figure bowed even lower and spoke. And although the sound was heavily distorted by the chaotic energy of the Internet that flowed throughout the room, it was still clearly recognizable as the voice of a man.

"My Queen."

There was no response from the bizarre creature at first. And then, for just a second, the room was filled with echoes of its high-pitched, garbled voice.

The Fangirl Queen _giggled._

* * *

Marluxia jumped slightly and nearly dropped a bottle of greenish liquid. Vexen and Lexaeus had both come barging into the room without warning, both sweating slightly as if they had ran all the way there.

"What's going on?", Marluxia asked, walking away from the hospital beds in order to avoid waking any of his patients. "Did you finish scanning through the files already?"

Lexaeus shook his head and opened his mouth to answer, but before he could form a single word, Vexen butted in.

"No, Marluxia," the scientist growled. His eye was beginning to twitch, a sure sign that he was trying to restrain his anger (and not doing so well.) "We have _not _scanned the files on the last Fangirl swarm yet."

The pink-haired man gave him an odd look.

"And why not?"

"Because they _don't exist, _that's why!! Everything about today's Fangirl swarms has been _completely_ wiped from the system!"

"Well, not quite," Lexaeus added. "The swarm that Axel, Demyx, and Zexion are busy with at the moment still has a file... but it seems that someone has deleted the other three."

"Not just deleted, completely _destroyed!_", Vexen almost yelled. "I wasn't able to recover any fragments of the deleted files... and there aren't even any backups left, for crying out loud! I know for a fact that Zagan keeps _three_ backup copies of _every _file related to his work with the Fangirl Detection System!!"

As Vexen stomped off down the hallway in search of some way to deal with his anger, Marluxia turned to Lexaeus once again.

"What do you think happened?"

"It's impossible to tell just yet," Lexaeus answered, turning and watching Vexen as he disappeared around a corner. "The room was completely empty by the time we got there, so there's no way of knowing how long Zagan had been out, or who may have been in there while he was gone."

"Hmm... maybe we should lock down the Fangirl Detection System," Marluxia suggested. "That is, until we're sure we know who's responsible."

"Zagan and Naminé usually take turns running the computers, so they should have access to the room... and of course, you and Vexen, since you discovered this problem in the first place. But everyone else should be kept out."

Lexaeus nodded.

"I'll arrange it with Xemnas," he said, glancing down the hall for a second as he heard the unmistakable sound of Vexen cursing and breaking something. "He should be able to set up a barrier around the room so that only a few authorized members can enter."

He turned and began walking down the hallway, heading in the opposite direction of where Vexen had gone. Just before he reached a corner, he turned back toward Marluxia.

"Let me know when Zexion returns from his current mission," Lexaeus said. "His abilities should be useful in discovering who's behind this."


	5. BloodSoaked Black Cloaks

**CHAPTER 4**  
_~ Blood-Soaked Black Cloaks ~_

"And Roxas," Lexaeus said, turning to address the boy from the doorway. "It would be wise to tell the newer recruits about Xion before this goes any further."

As the giant of a man left the room, Roxas nodded and turned toward the other beds. Vi and Tundo each set aside their food for the moment and focused their full attention on the injured boy, while Banbu pulled up another small chair like Naminé's and sat down between the beds.

Roxas cleared his throat, then winced in pain and clutched his chest for a second. Once the pain had subsided, he finally spoke.

"It all started at the end of my first week here..."

* * *

_372 days ago. Roxas' seventh day in the Organization._

Roxas fell to his knees, breathing heavily and apparently sweating from every pore on his body. A white katana fell from his left hand, clattering against the floor and flickering slightly as if it was about to disappear. On the other side of the room, a skinny-looking man with spiky red hair stood, holding a large, bladed wheel in each hand.

"C'mon, Roxas, get up," he called over to the boy. "It's not your first day of training anymore!"

He brandished one of the chakrams in front of him, then went charging across the room.

"You should be able to keep going longer than this!"

At the last second before impact, Roxas lifted his weapon and swung it upward in front of him, barely managing to block the spiky-haired man's attack. Without warning, his opponent's leg swept outward and slammed into his side, knocking the wind out of him and sending him spinning backward. His katana flew out of his hands, skidding across the floor for a second before disappearing in a flash of energy.

"Axel," Roxas groaned, clutching his sides and struggling to stand up. "What was that for!?"

The spiky-haired man grinned and dematerialized his two weapons, then walked over to the boy and helped him to his feet.

"You've gotta learn how to deal with surprise attacks, kid," he said, patting Roxas on the shoulder. "Just because most of our guys fight fair doesn't mean the Fangirls will."

Roxas groaned and rolled his eyes, then lightly shoved Axel.

"Since when have _you_ fought fair?"

"Hey, I did say _most_, remember?"

Roxas began to walk out of the training room, wiping the sweat off of his face with a small towel before pushing the door open. Axel followed not far behind him, quickly catching up to the boy due to his longer stride (though the fact that he wasn't even slightly winded by their training session probably helped, too.)

He tapped Roxas on the shoulder, causing him to turn his head to see what the matter was.

"Wait, don't go running off just yet."

"I'm just going to get some lunch..."

"No time for that." Axel grabbed Roxas' shoulder, yanking him back when he tried to walk off again. "Xemnas called an emergency meeting right before our training session ended... we're getting another new member today."

_~XIII~XIII~XIII~XIII~_

While most of the rooms in the Organization's base looked like the inside of any other modern building, the one where Roxas now stood was completely different. The entire room appeared to have been carved out of a solid block of white stone, up to and including the thirteen thrones arranged in a circle along the room's walls. There were many entrances, and the ceiling rose up a good thirty feet higher than that of any room Roxas had seen before. Something about the room gave it an almost church-like feel, as if it were some kind of ancient temple.

Twelve of the white thrones were filled by the Organization's highest-ranking officials; a tattered cloak was draped over the thirteenth, in memory of another member who had been killed in battle before Roxas had even joined. Despite the meeting's importance, Roxas appeared to be the only non-numbered member in attendance.

From the highest of the thrones, Xemnas raised his hands and spoke.

"Today, another has stepped forward, as we all have... to work toward the end of the Fangirl menace."

The leader of the Organization waved his hands slightly for emphasis, clenching them into fists and nearly slamming them onto his throne as he mentioned "the Fangirl menace."

"I introduce to you... the newest member of Organization XIII."

Xemnas spoke slowly and carefully as always, drawing out his words far longer than anyone else would ever imagine doing. He then raised his hand toward one of the room's many doors and made a beckoning motion.

"Come forward."

A small, pale-skinned girl with black hair nervously emerged from the doorway, staring straight ahead toward Xemnas' throne and apparently trying as hard as she could to not look at anyone else in the room.

Roxas nudged Axel slightly, then whispered up to him.

"She looks kinda lost... are you sure she wanted to join?"

Axel just nodded in response, holding up one finger to his mouth to signal that Roxas wasn't allowed to talk just yet.

Apparently not noticing the young boy speaking out of turn, Xemnas continued his speech.

"Our newest member, unfortunately, suffers from rather extensive memory loss... so severe, I'm afraid, that she cannot even remember her own name."

The little girl nodded slightly, then continued to stare up toward the highest of the thirteen thrones. Usually, new recruits were afraid of Xemnas; all but the toughest of them tried to avoid looking into his odd, bright-orange eyes, and some were terrified just to stand in his presence. For some reason, however, this one was a bit different.

"As such, I have chosen a new name for her... you may call her Xion."

Roxas scratched his head and looked up toward Axel again, poking him in the leg a few times to get his attention.

"That's a weird one," he whispered. "I wonder what her name was before..."

Once again, the spiky-haired man looked down and motioned for Roxas to be quiet, this time adding in an audible _"shhhh!"_ afterward. Xemnas turned his head toward the direction of the noise and stared, shaking his head at Axel before shifting his attention back to Xion.

"Xion... your training begins tomorrow," Xemnas said. The little girl paused for a moment, then nodded. After a few seconds passed, the Organization's leader continued his speech.

"And, since he appears to be in such a hurry for this meeting to end... Number Eight of our Organization will be assisting you."

Axel, who had barely been paying attention before, nearly jumped out of his seat in shock.

* * *

"After that, we both trained with Axel every chance we got," Roxas said, glancing over to Vi and Tundo's beds and noticing that their food trays were now completely empty. A few feet away, Banbu sat in his small chair and munched away at a (most likely stolen) bagel.

"Before long, she started getting stronger... she learned how to summon her weapon on her second day of training, and after a few more weeks we could almost keep up with Axel if we went after him together."

Roxas noticed some quiet snoring from the other side of his bed, and turned to see that Naminé had fallen asleep. Marluxia closed her sketchpad and placed a pillow behind the sleeping girl's head, then returned to the other side of the room, where he had been grinding some dried plants into a fine powder to be used as medicine later.

Keeping his voice low to avoid accidentally waking Naminé, Roxas continued his story.

* * *

_343 days ago. Roxas' thirty-sixth day in the Organization._

As Roxas and Xion walked down one of the mountain base's many hallways, they were suddenly stopped by a voice from a few feet behind them.

"Hey, did you guys hear the news?"

The voice belonged to Zagan, who had just stepped out of the Fangirl Detection System room as the two kids passed by. After thinking about it for a second, Roxas realized that he had no idea what the older man meant, shook his head, and shrugged.

"Uh... what news?"

"Well, well... looks like I get to be the messenger for once, then," Zagan laughed, stroking his beard and walking over to the two. "The higher-up guys had a meeting earlier, and they decided they're going to open up the empty chair to new members again."

Without any more explanation, he spun around and walked back into the room he came from, leaving the two newest members standing confused in the hallway.

"The empty chair?", Xion asked, not sure what Zagan was talking about.

"Yeah," Roxas began to explain. "You remember that white room, from back when you first joined, right?"

The girl nodded, still not quite sure what was going on.

"So, didn't you notice that one of the chairs didn't have anyone sitting it?"

She shook her head, then looked down slightly.

"I... really didn't look at the chairs that much... I guess I was a little bit afraid of most of the older members back then."

"Oh... sorry."

"It's okay," she said, smiling slightly. "I was lost and couldn't remember anything... and then Xemnas just scooped me up and brought me here. I'm sure you'd be kinda scared too, if that happened to you."

The two continued to walk down the hall for a few seconds before Roxas spoke again.

"It did."

Xion suddenly stopped.

"W... what... did you just say?"

"It _did_ happen that way for me," he continued. "When I first came here, I couldn't remember anything about my past. I barely even remembered my own name... the only clear memory was the Fangirls' horrible, squealing voices."

They continued walking. As they went around another corner, Xion asked a question.

"You remembered your name? So... does that mean you never got a new one?"

"Nah," Roxas said, "I remembered my old name, but I didn't have any other old memories to go with it... so I decided I'd change it, just like the twelve numbered members did."

"Soooo," Xion said, leaning in toward Roxas and pretending to whisper. "You thought you'd get Number Thirteen for sure if you changed your name like the other twelve did?"

"Hey, who knows? Maybe I _will_ be Number Thirteen someday."

The two laughed, then continued walking.

"Well, if you _do_ get Number Thirteen," Xion said, grinning mischievously. "Then I'm gonna make Xemnas put in another chair... so I can be Number Fourteen."

_~XIII~XIII~XIII~XIII~_

_311 days ago. Roxas' sixty-eighth day in the Organization._

"Whoa!"

Axel jumped backward to dodge two slashes from Roxas' swords. He wasn't expecting to see two swords so soon--Roxas had only been in the Organization for a little over two months, and yet he had already learned how to summon a second weapon; he didn't even seem to have any problem wielding them both at the same time.

Another thing the spiky-haired man wasn't expecting was Xion's attack from behind. While he was distracted by Roxas' newfound ability, she had circled around and landed a flying kick square in his back, knocking him to the floor. He rolled over and grabbed his chakrams, only to find himself staring at the hook-tipped point of the girl's sword, held just inches away from his face.

For just a moment, the training room went silent.

Everyone inside was completely exhausted. Roxas and Axel's spiky haircuts were visibly soaked in sweat, with various strands of hair drooping and hanging down into their faces. Xion was panting for breath, causing her weapon to shake slightly as it hovered over Axel's face. All three had thrown off their cloaks at this point, and both of the males had removed their undershirts as well, revealing a collection of small cuts and a few bruises that were already becoming visible.

"Well... looks like you two win this one."

Axel dematerialized his weapons and scooted a few feet away from where Xion was standing before hopping back to his feet. After waiting for the two kids to put their own weapons away, he began clapping, earning some odd looks from both of his trainees.

"Congratulations!", he shouted, pulling both of them into one-armed hugs and laughing. "You kids finally managed to beat me!"

"_Finally?_", Xion said, almost mockingly. "I don't think anyone else has _ever_ managed to win against one of the top twelve after just two months of training."

"Hmmm," Axel said, cocking his head to one side, "Maybe not. But most of the other guys had to do it on their own, remember."

After taking a few steps, he spun around and added one last thing.

"And anyway, you still haven't broken any records... it only took Michiko a month to figure out how to beat Zexion."

"Well... yeah," Roxas groaned. "I guess we've still got a while to go after all..."

_~XIII~XIII~XIII~XIII~_

_279 days ago. Roxas' hundredth day in the Organization._

Vexen cleared his throat, then walked to the front of a small classroom filled with new recruits who had completed their combat training. The youngest among them were Roxas and Xion, each only fourteen years of age; they sat near the middle of the class, wanting to avoid the rowdier members in the back but also keeping their distance from Vexen in case someone happened to set off one of his angry rants.

"Today," the old scientist began, "You are going to learn a bit more about the plague that threatens our world... Fangirls."

He scratched away at the chalkboard for a few seconds, then drew a picture of a rather disturbing creature. It was shaped almost like a teenage girl, but its body proportions were off and its face was made up of letters and symbols rather than any actual facial features.

"I'm sure you all have picked up the basics by now... but you most likely have not encountered many Fangirls yourselves."

"Today, you will learn to recognize some of the more common breeds."

After adding a few final details, Vexen stepped to the side, giving the entire class a good view of the Fangirl he had drawn.

"This creature is what is known as a 'Glomper Fangirl.' Although the Glompers are among the lesser varieties of Fangirls, they can still be quite dangerous... especially in large numbers."

He pointed toward the creature's arm, where the words "Energy Draining" had been written on the blackboard.

"The Glompers, unlike more powerful Fangirls, have but a single method of attack... they charge, latch on with their arms, and then rapidly drain away the victim's energy."

Vexen wrote a few more things on the blackboard, and then drew a small chart above the Fangirl's head.

"As you may already know, the Fangirl transformation is triggered by repeated exposure to certain parts of the Internet," he said, pointing to the first part of the diagram. There was a sketch of a little girl--who looked quite a bit like Xion--sitting in front of a computer.

"At first, those who are starting to transform will behave normally... at least when they are away from their computers. After several weeks of exposure, however, they begin to spend more and more time on Fangirlish activities, tossing aside other parts of their lives in order to maintain a constant connection to the Internet."

He then drew two more sections of the chart, branching off in different directions. One box showed a picture of a Glomper Fangirl standing next to a computer, while the other only contained a large question mark.

"At some point, they will fall unconscious in front of their computer," he said, pointing to a previous section of the chart that showed the Xion-lookalike with her face smashed into her keyboard. "Once this happens, the transformation into a Fangirl is thought to be irreversible."

He pointed to the box containing the question mark, paused for a second, and then turned to the class.

"If that is true... what do you suppose would happen if someone were to be separated from the Internet during this time?"

Several students raised their hands, and Vexen paced back and forth for a few seconds, looking over the class. He then stopped and pointed to a green-haired girl, who appeared to be only a few years older than Roxas.

"Michiko," he asked, "What do _you_ think would happen?"

"It's irreversible," she answered, "So... nothing would happen. They'd just turn into a Fangirl anyway. Right?"

An odd smile spread across Vexen's face as he walked back toward the front of the classroom.

"Up until very recently, I believed that to be the case."

He wiped away the question mark with his hands, and picked up another piece of chalk and began to draw a little girl's face, just like the one in the previous pictures.

"However... several months ago, Xemnas and I were fortunate enough to find a young girl who had just begun her Fangirlization process."

"As an experiment, we turned off the girl's computer and moved her to a safer location... and in doing so, we discovered that separating a person from the Internet appears to halt the Fangirl transformation."

Their teacher opened his mouth to continue, but was cut short when the room's door suddenly swung open and nearly slammed against the wall of the classroom. Standing in the doorway was a dark-skinned man with silvery hair and strange, bright-orange eyes--none other than the Organization's leader, Xemnas.

"Number Four," he said, turning to face the old man. "The results of the Fangirl disconnection experiment are not to be discussed with those who were not involved in the project."

Vexen shivered and frowned slightly, then followed Xemnas as he walked out into the hallway. Just before passing through the door, he turned back toward his students and spoke.

"I want everyone to read over the common types of Fangirls in your textbooks... and there _will_ be a test on the subject when I return, so don't think you can slack off just because I'm not watching!"

_~XIII~XIII~XIII~XIII~_

Roxas and Xion sat in one of the Organization's mess halls, joined at the table by a small group of their fellow students. The entire group had their textbooks open in front of them, reading over the material that Vexen had assigned to them when their class had been abruptly dismissed.

"Ewww, gross!", Michiko groaned, shuddering as she read through the description of a particularly horrific Fangirl. The other students glanced over to her, wondering just which one she was talking about; most of them hadn't read nearly as far in their books as she had.

"I can't believe there's Fangirls that can _impregnate_ you with some kind of mutant Fangirl-spawn... that's just _wrong!_"

A large man wearing a Mexican wrestling mask turned toward the green-haired girl and spoke up.

"And that's not even the worst part," he said, pointing to a line in his book. "Says right here that some of 'em can even do that to _guys_..."

The whole table erupted in groans of disgust, and a few of the weaker-stomached members began to look a bit pale before rushing off to the nearest bathroom as fast as they could.

Roxas didn't take part in the discussion at all, however; ever since he left the classroom, he had been unable to take his eyes off of Xion for even a minute. While everyone else had been eating and reading through their textbooks, the dark-haired girl had barely touched her food, and her book was still flipped open to the same page that it had been on when she started.

"Hey," he said, nudging her slightly to get her attention. "What's wrong?"

"It's... nothing."

"Come on... if there wasn't something bothering you, you would've already finished reading half an hour ago."

Xion sighed, then closed her book and shoved it off to the side. She picked up one of the cookies she had piled onto her plate and nibbled at it, but stopped after barely half of it was gone.

"It's that thing Vexen was talking about... how a Fangirl stops transforming if it's separated from the Internet."

Roxas glanced at the cookie, then back to Xion's face, looking a bit confused.

"Huh? Why would something like that bother you?"

"Well... he said that he started the experiment a few months ago, but other than me, we didn't get any new members back then."

Roxas nodded. It was true that nobody else had joined since Xion herself, though he still wasn't quite sure what she was getting at.

"So... you're wondering where that girl went, right?"

"Well... kind of. But not exactly..."

The two were silent for the next few minutes. Roxas took this time to get more of his reading done, while Xion just stared off into space, occasionally taking a few more tiny bites out of a cookie. Finally, once some of the others had finished their meals and left the table, Xion spoke once again.

"Hey... Roxas?"

He sat down his book, then looked up and turned toward her slightly.

"When people become Fangirls... they forget everything about their past lives, don't they?"

_~XIII~XIII~XIII~XIII~_

_215 days ago. Roxas' one hundred and sixty-fourth day in the Organization._

For the first time in over a month, Xemnas had called an emergency meeting. All of the top thirteen officials (though only twelve existed at the moment) were required to attend, and attendance was strongly encouraged even for those who hadn't yet reached such a high rank.

After pushing past some lower-ranking members who were slowly shuffling down the hall, Roxas ran as fast as he could, quickly catching up to Axel and Demyx as they all headed for the white room where the thirteen chairs were located.

"Hey, Axel... Demyx... what's going on?"

"No idea," Demyx answered, shrugging his shoulders slightly. "The old guys just called an emergency meeting without telling us much of anything, so I guess it must be pretty important..."

"I'm not sure what this is about, either," Axel added, "But there's a rumor going around that one of the newbies is missing."

"Really? I'm pretty sure all my guys are still here."

"It's not one of your guys, Demyx... they're so loud that we'd _know_ if they were missing."

Roxas caught his breath, then went running off again, speeding past Axel and Demyx as the two older members continued to joke around in the hallway. Before long, he had reached his destination: the white room, with most of its chairs already filled.

Today was very different from the last time Roxas had seen the room--quite a few lower-ranked members were standing around the edges of the room, most of them staying near their superior officer's chair. Before heading over toward Axel's chair, he took a look around the room, spotting a few familiar faces as well as some he didn't see quite as often.

Sitting on the floor near Xigbar's chair was an old man with unkempt hair and sunglasses, wearing a black leather jacket rather than the usual Organization XIII cloak. A heavily-muscled man with spiky silver hair stood, arms crossed, to the left of Xaldin's chair. Standing with his back to Vexen's chair was a tall, thin man whose entire face was covered with a strange-looking mask. No matter how much he thought about it, Roxas couldn't figure out how he would possibly be able to see, especially since the mask had no eyeholes.

Between Lexaeus' and Zexion's chairs, Michiko was standing and talking to an older man with long, silvery hair. Next to Saix's chair, another blue-haired elf sat cross-legged on the floor, apparently meditating. Naminé was sitting in a tiny chair next to Marluxia's much larger throne, staring down at a sketchbook and rapidly scribbling away like she always did. Zagan had already taken a seat against the wall beside Axel's chair, so Roxas walked over to join him.

"Ah, so you decided to show up for this one," Zagan said, pushing his glasses up slightly. "Looks like I won't be the only one at this chair today after all."

Roxas paused for a second, not quite sure what he meant. He looked up at Zagan, but it was impossible to tell what he was thinking--his expression was pretty much blank, and his reflective sunglasses made it impossible to get a clear look at his eyes.

"Why's that? Xion's probably on her way right now..."

"You mean nobody told you?"

Before Roxas had a chance to ask Zagan what he meant, Axel and Demyx entered the room and hopped up into their chairs. Now that all of the top thirteen members were present, the meeting had officially begun--which meant absolute silence for everyone else in the room.

"Organization XIII," Xemnas spoke, not waving his hands nearly as often as he usually did. "I have called this meeting to inform you of an unfortunate development... one of our members has gone missing."

"Specifically... Xion suddenly disappeared at some point early this morning, before most of us had even awakened."

A wave of quiet whispers spread throughout the room; normally, Xemnas would have quickly silenced them with the threat of some minor (but annoying) punishment, but today he ignored the whispers and continued on with his speech.

"It appears that she left the base through the caves, then climbed down the mountain alone... without leaving behind any indication of why she left or where she was headed."

The whispers continued, and the Organization's leader continued to ignore them. He looked around the room for several seconds, watching as the other members talked amongst themselves, before finally focusing in on Roxas. The boy's hand was raised slightly, as if he were asking permission to speak.

"It seems Roxas has something to say," Xemnas said, motioning toward him. He nodded, then stepped away from Axel's chair, into the center of the room.

"I... I think I might know why she left," Roxas stuttered. He gulped slightly, then continued. "A month or two ago, after Vexen mentioned disconnecting Fangirls from the Internet... she started acting weird."

Across the room, several members suddenly stopped their previous conversations and focused in on the young boy. Vexen, who was in the middle of eating an avocado, nearly dropped the green fruit in his lap. Saix twitched slightly. Even Xemnas almost seemed to be surprised by what he had just heard.

"She never came out and said it, but... I think Xion must have gotten the idea that _she_ was the girl who almost transformed into a Fangirl, somehow."

He looked up toward Vexen, then to Xemnas, and finally around the room to the various other members.

"But that can't be right... can it?"

_~XIII~XIII~XIII~XIII~_

_204 days ago. Roxas' one hundred and seventy-fifth day in the Organization._

"I already told you, Roxas... we've looked over the entire base _twice._"

Zexion sat down a clipboard full of papers and pointed to the large map on the wall, with various parts color-coded depending on how long it took to search them and what was discovered. He then turned back to Roxas and frowned slightly.

"The evidence suggests that Xion only visited three rooms before leaving... Vexen's lab, the lower bank vault, and one of the kitchens."

"Hey, don't worry about it so much," Demyx added in. "She took food! And money, too. She's probably okay... wherever she is."

"Here's what I'm wondering," Zagan said, reading over the papers in Zexion's clipboard. "What was she after in Vexen's lab? All the reports say that nothing was missing, and I kinda doubt she'd just stop in to look around one more time before leaving."

Roxas thought about it for a second. He remembered how Xemnas seemed to want Vexen's experiment on Fangirl disconnection to stay secret until the project was finished, and immediately an idea popped into his head.

"I think I know."

Zexion, Demyx, and Zagan all turned toward him, listening for the answer.

"She was looking for Vexen's notes. He must have written down something about that experiment... that's got to be what Xion wanted to find."

"Perhaps," Zexion said, "But nothing was taken from Vexen's lab. From what I saw, it looked like none of his things had been disturbed at all... and there were no reports on any Fangirl disconnection experiment."

One of the doors nearby suddenly swung open, and Vexen rushed into the room, standing in front of everyone and catching his breath for a few seconds before finally speaking.

"Someone's been messing around in my secret files," the old scientist said, breathing heavily and almost shouting. "Everything related to my most recent experiments... _gone!_"

Zexion raised his one visible eyebrow.

"_'Secret'_ files?"

"Yes, secret files. That's what I said," Vexen growled. "Of course, you wouldn't have seen them when you searched the rest of my lab... they're called 'secret' for a reason, after all."

"So," Zagan asked, "You think Xion must have snatched 'em?"

"Of course! Who else would be so interested in _that_ experiment? Who else would be so intent on finding something that they would even figure out how to break into my secret files!?"

"Uh, wait a second," Demyx butted in, looking slightly confused. "You didn't notice anything was missing until today?"

"No," Vexen answered, calming down slightly. "I don't check on those files very often... usually, I only open them up when I have something to add."

"Xemnas and I are the only ones who even knew they existed before now... so I would never have suspected that a mere _child_ would figure out how to find them!"

"So," Zexion said, walking over to where Vexen was standing. "What, exactly, do you suppose we should do next?"

"Well, we certainly should try to find our little runaway and return her to the base," Vexen said. "Perhaps we should send several of the non-numbered members to spread out across different areas and search for her?"

"They won't have to search very far," Zagan noted. "With the amount of money Xion stole from the vault, she'd never be able to afford any long-distance transportation. So she's probably still running around somewhere in Japan."

"I'll handle that," Zexion said, walking off toward the still-open door. "Any non-numbered member who's completed basic combat training will be busy searching every last inch of Japan by this time tomorrow."

"Except for one, that is... Roxas, you'll be staying here."

"Huh?", Demyx spoke up again. "How come he's gotta stay behind?"

"Just in case Xion decides to return on her own," Zexion answered. "Roxas _is_ one of the few members she really trusted, and I'm sure her trust in the older members is even less than before now that she knows every detail of the Fangirl disconnection experiment. If she does come back, she might just leave again... unless someone is able to convince her to stay."

_~XIII~XIII~XIII~XIII~_

_201 days ago. Roxas' one hundred and seventy-eighth day in the Organization._

Roxas paced back and forth just inside the base's main entrance, occasionally staring out across the mountains outside. The door had been left open for the past three days in hopes that Xion would return once she ran out of food, but so far it seemed that the plan to lure her back wasn't working.

Standing in a dark corner a few yards away, with his face concealed by his hood, was Xigbar. Though Zexion had intended for Roxas to wait near the entrance alone, some of the other high-ranking members thought this might be a bit too dangerous for the boy and the sniper was assigned to wait just out of sight in case something went wrong.

For a second, Roxas glanced back toward the older man, noticing that he had reached up under his hood to adjust his eyepatch. He turned back to the open door, noticing that a group of non-numbered members had returned from another one of their search missions.

A man slightly taller than Xigbar stepped through the door, removing his hood as he went and revealing his long, silvery-colored hair.

"No sign of her yet, huh?"

"Nope," Roxas answered, sighing slightly. "I haven't seen Xion here at all... I was kind of hoping you guys would have found her."

"Well, Otonashi thought he spotted her once," Michiko said, taking off her hood and brushing a few strands of green hair out of her face. "But then we caught up to her, and it turned out that it just some other little girl wearing blue contact lenses..."

"It's no wonder we couldn't find 'er," the large man in the Mexican wrestling mask grunted. "There's a ton of short, skinny, black-haired girls in Japan... Xion's got built-in camouflage down there."

Roxas would have laughed, but he wasn't in the mood for it; it came out as just one small snicker and a half-smile. The three Organization members walked off down the hallway, once again leaving Roxas and Xigbar alone at the doorway.

_~XIII~XIII~XIII~XIII~_

Hours passed before something finally happened. All of the Organization's search parties had returned for the day, and the sun was beginning to set. Roxas was now sitting on the floor, watching the sunset outside as it reflected off of the ocean in the distance and gave odd colors to the mountains below them.

Xigbar yawned, stepping slightly out of the shadows and reaching for a flask of some unknown liquid attached to his belt, hidden underneath his cloak. He had just taken a long drink when his pointed ears picked up the sound of small rocks shifting outside the door. Someone was coming up the mountain.

Another minute passed before Roxas noticed the sound; his hearing wasn't nearly as sensitive as an elf's. He pulled himself back to his feet just as a small, dark shape crawled up into his view, just outside of the mountain base's front entrance.

"Xion?", he asked, taking a step toward the door. "Is that you?"

The dark shape stopped for a second, looking up as if recognizing his voice. The figure's left hand reached up to its hood and removed it, revealing the dark-haired, blue-eyed face of a young girl. Xion was indeed the one inside the tattered cloak, though she appeared to be in bad shape. Her face was dirty, as if it hadn't been washed in days. Her hair was messed-up as well, and there were a few small cuts visible on her face and neck.

She crawled through the door and almost immediately collapsed onto the floor, sprawling her arms and legs out as she fell. Xigbar clipped his flask back to his belt and quickly rushed over to the unconscious girl, joined only seconds later by Roxas.

"She's alive," the old elf muttered, "But it looks like she's hurt. And she's breathing kinda funny... we'd better get 'er back to the sickbay, and fast."

Xigbar reached down and scooped up the little girl, then turned around and headed down the nearest hallway. After glancing at the sunset one more time, Roxas followed him.

After only a few steps, Xion's eyes suddenly flashed open. Before Xigbar could react, she had pushed off of him and jumped out of his arms, flipping backward in midair before landing back on the ground. Xigbar opened his mouth to ask her a question, but before he could make a sound, she summoned her hook-tipped sword and rushed at him.

If the old elf had been prepared for a fight, he would have had no problem knocking Xion aside with a single attack--in fact, he would have needed to hold back quite a bit just to avoid seriously hurting the little girl. At the moment, however, he was anything but prepared. Before his weapons had fully materialized in his hands, she had slashed him across the side with her sword, ripping through his cloak and sending blood flying everywhere.

Xigbar slumped to his knees, clutching his wounded side with one hand while supporting himself with the other. His weapons, which looked like an odd combination of gun and crossbow, flickered out of existence almost as quickly as they had appeared.

"Damn," he cursed, "What the hell was that for!?"

She hissed slightly, then raised her weapon and charged at Xigbar once again. Before she could hit him, however, her strike was blocked by Roxas' white-bladed katana. She jumped back, then lowered her weapon slightly and stared at the spiky-haired boy from across the room, ignoring the wounded man on the floor.

"What're you doing!?", Roxas asked, lowering his weapon as well. "You just hurt Xigbar for no reason! I know you've never really liked the older members that much, but that's..."

She narrowed her eyes slightly, staring at Roxas and listening to him speak for a moment before interrupting him.

"I'm a Fangirl, remember?"

Xion rushed at Roxas, and their two blades clashed together over and over in the span of only a few seconds. She aimed a kick at Roxas' stomach, but he caught her foot with his free hand and used the force of the attack to push her away. His training with Axel over the past few months had served him well; when he had first begun his training, a sneak attack like that would have sent him flying.

"Your job," she said, "The whole Organization's job. It's to get rid of people like me, isn't it?"

Roxas gritted his teeth as Xion attacked him once again, blocking her overhead strike with the flat edge of his weapon and struggling to keep himself from being pushed back.

"Fangirls aren't _people_," Roxas said, hopping away as Xion's sword pushed him back and slammed into the floor where he once stood, sending shards of stone and dust flying everywhere. "And... you're _not_ a Fangirl!!"

"That's not what Vexen's secret reports said."

She jumped at Roxas, swinging her sword down and narrowly missing her target. The blow cleaved another chunk out of the floor, forcing Roxas to step to the side to avoid being hit by the stone shrapnel.

"I'm just an incomplete Fangirl," she continued, "I lost my memories, but I never transformed all the way... and until he could prove otherwise, he decided to classify me as just another new kind of Fangirl."

Xion attacked again, slashing from the side; this time, Roxas only barely managed to block her swing, and part of his cloak was cut in the process.

"But you're _not_ a Fangirl," Roxas almost yelled, shoving her back with his sword. "Real Fangirls don't just lose all their memories... they lose _everything_ about themselves! They aren't really _themselves_ at all anymore, once they've transformed!"

"If I'm not a Fangirl... then how come I can do _this?_"

Xion dematerialized her sword, then rushed in and tackled Roxas, knocking the wind out of him and sending his weapon clattering to the floor. She pinned him to the ground, then latched onto his face with both hands; almost immediately, he felt his energy beginning to drain away.

Before this could continue any further, Roxas managed to get his legs free and planted a double kick in the girl's stomach, sending her flying back across the room and crashing to the floor several feet away. He then stood up, struggling at first but quickly regaining his strength.

"So?", Roxas said, retrieving his sword from the ground, "So what if you picked up a few Fangirl abilities from some kind of weird side-effect?"

He lowered his sword, then walked over to the spot where she had landed.

"That still doesn't mean you're just another Fangirl," he said, reaching out his free hand and offering to help her up. "And you really shouldn't be acting like one, either..."

"What happened to the way you were before?"

Xion began to stand up on her own, ignoring Roxas' hand. Before Roxas could say anything else, she rematerialized her weapon in a flash of energy and swung it at his face. He bent back slightly, turning the potentially deadly attack into a near-miss that only left a small cut on his cheek. Xion slashed at him again, but this time he saw it coming and dodged out of the way.

"I haven't changed one bit," she said, taking a step toward Roxas. "The only difference is that now, I know _why_ I am the way I am..."

She swung at Roxas with the flat side of her sword, then summoned a second blade at the instant her first attack was blocked. Roxas was unable to dodge this time, and Xion's new sword dug into his left shoulder, causing him to scream out in pain. He staggered back slightly, glancing down at the wound for a second and holding onto it with his right arm.

"Fangirls usually latch on to one or two people as their 'targets.' Everyone else either bothers them, or is just ignored..."

"For me," she said, swinging her first sword at Roxas again, "It was you. The only reason we ever got along like we did... was because you were my 'target' as a Fangirl."

Roxas struggled to block the attack, now that his shoulder was wounded; he had to grip the sword's hilt with both hands just to push Xion back this time. She repeatedly slashed at him again, forcing him to dodge and jump away as fast as he could just to keep from being injured any further.

"I really don't want to hurt you," he said, taking a real swing at the dark-haired girl for the first time in their battle. "But you've got to snap out of this, Xion..."

She swung both of her blades upward to meet Roxas', easily knocking his attack away, then stabbed at him with her new sword. The blade's tip poked through Roxas' cloak, but he moved out of the way just in time to avoid being cut.

"You don't want to _hurt_ me?", she said. "Don't you get it, Roxas? I'm a Fangirl, and your Organization's sole purpose is to exterminate us."

Roxas yelled and swung his sword at her, causing sparks to fly everywhere when their blades collided in midair.

"No, _you're_ the one who doesn't get it! You're _NOT_ a Fangirl!!"

Xion's swords were pushed down by the force of Roxas' attack, leaving her open for the next one. Roxas lunged at her and stabbed, cutting into the side of her lower torso and only narrowly missing any vital organs. Before the blade could cut too far in, she pulled away and fell backwards onto the floor.

One of Xion's swords wavered slightly, then vanished in a flash of light. She had not yet mastered the ability to wield two weapons at once, so this new injury was more than enough to break her concentration.

"Now we're all hurt," Roxas mumbled, glancing over to the wounded man on the floor several yards away and then back to Xion. "I don't wanna fight anymore, Xion. I don't care if you're a Fangirl or not anymore... but you can help me carry Xigbar to the sickbay if you want."

Xion lowered her sword slightly. For the first time in their fight, she seemed to have actually considered what Roxas said. This moment ended as quickly as it began, however, when she raised her sword again and rushed at Roxas, swinging her sword at his side as she passed. It was the same attack that had caught Xigbar off guard before.

Roxas sidestepped the attack and countered with one of his own, leaving a deep gash in Xion's side and splattering the stone floor with blood once again. She gasped and fell to the floor immediately, barely breaking her fall with both hands. Her one remaining sword fell, then flickered and disappeared.

The boy dematerialized his own sword and was almost instantly at Xion's side. He lifted her up slightly, then tore off his cloak and wrapped it around her, trying desperately to stop the bleeding. For a moment, Xion almost smiled.

"Don't bother," she said weakly. "It's too late for me already."

She coughed several times, then looked down at the floor beside her. A pool of blood had formed where she had landed, spreading out across the stone floor and sinking into every little crack and pit in the rock.

"Well... I guess you were right after all," she mumbled, half-consciously staring up at Roxas. "Fangirls... don't bleed, do they?"

Roxas shook his head. Xion smiled at him again, before her eyes began to slip shut.

He lifted her up off of the floor and hugged her tightly, causing his own underclothes to become soaked in blood as well. Her entire body then began to glow green, exactly like all other Fangirls did upon their deaths.

The green glow became brighter and brighter, then rapidly faded away. There was no shattering noise to be heard, and the shower of garbled computer code that came along with the death of every other Fangirl was absent as well.

She had simply vanished, leaving Roxas standing alone, holding onto nothing more than two torn, blood-soaked black cloaks.


	6. Say No to Crack

**CHAPTER 5**  
_~ Say No to Crack ~_

Three days passed before Roxas was well enough to get out of bed. During this time, Lexaeus, Vexen, and Zexion had begun their investigation into the missing Fangirl Detection System files; unfortunately, their search had not yielded much information so far.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes, Vexen," Zexion answered, closing his eyes and focusing in on every last bit of residual energy in the room. "There have been no unauthorized members in the room since the missing files were discovered three days ago."

He swept across the room, breathing in slightly through his nose as if sniffing for some sort of scent trail.

"Besides the three of us," the short man continued, "The only energy traces in the room belong to Zagan, Naminé, and Xemnas. And Xemnas' trace is very faint, probably left over from when he first put up this barrier."

Lexaeus glanced over the computer screens for a few seconds. It was just as Zexion had said--not only were there no traces of energy from anyone else left behind in the room, but there was no indication that any of the files had been accessed from this computer in the last three days. And yet, somehow, all the files related to the last of the four Fangirl swarms--the only ones that hadn't disappeared before--were now missing.

"If nobody's accessed them from within this room," Zexion mumbled as he looked over the screen again. "Then there's only one possibility..."

Speaking up for the first time, Lexaeus finished his friend's sentence for him.

"Someone has been hacking into our system from the outside."

"Nonsense," Vexen snapped. "There's not a hacker in the world with the skill necessary to do such a thing."

"And even if there was... this computer system isn't connected to any sort of external network. It would be completely impossible for anyone to access it from outside of this base."

Without warning, a flare of pink light appeared on one of the computer screens. The three men turned their heads; it appeared as though a small Fangirl outbreak had just begun somewhere in the western United States.

"Zexion," Vexen said, taking a step over toward the computer, "Lexaeus and I will activate the Fangirl alarm, then continue our investigation here."

"This doesn't seem to be a very large swarm," Lexaeus added, looking over the information on the screen as the computer scanned the area. "But it's centered in a highly-populated area... This could get out of hand if a team isn't sent in immediately."

The youngest of the three nodded, then turned and left the room, passing through the barrier around it as the Fangirl alarm began to ring throughout the entire base.

* * *

Only a few minutes later, Zexion was leading a small team of black-cloaked fighters into the tunnel where the Dimensional Hippievan was waiting. He had managed to find Axel and a couple of lower-ranking members as they were leaving the mess hall, and apparently they were in the mood for a fight after three days without any Fangirl attacks.

"This Fangirl swarm isn't nearly as large as the last few," the small man explained to his team, "But this time, civilians getting in the way could become a problem... and we won't have much open space to fight them in. They've appeared right in the middle of a major city."

"Major city, huh?", Axel asked, scratching his head slightly. "Any idea which one?"

"I believe it's a desert city called 'Las Vegas.'"

Standing a few feet away, the largest member of the group--a heavily-muscled man wearing a Mexican wrestling mask--puffed out his chest and laughed.

"Ah, Las Vegas... that's not far from my homeland."

"C'mon, let's go!", Michiko said, sliding open the side door of the Hippievan.

The rest of the group hopped into the vehicle after the green-haired girl, with Zexion taking the wheel and the others all crowding into the back seats. The van rolled forward and then rocketed out from the end of the tunnel, floating through the air for a few seconds before disappearing in a flash of light.

After a few seconds of flight through the swirling void, they had reached their destination. Reappearing in another flash of energy, the Dimensional Hippievan rolled to a stop in a hotel parking lot--a perfect landing, stopping directly in between the lines and not even bumping into the curb. Though Zexion was far from the strongest member of the Organization when it came to battle, he was a surprisingly good driver.

The three in the back seat pushed past each other in a rush to get out of the van, and Zexion followed shortly afterward, opening the door halfway and lightly hopping down from the driver's seat. Once everyone was outside, Axel raised his hand to block out the sun and surveyed the city around them.

"Huh... that's weird," he mumbled, squinting to get a better look at the people passing by them on the other side of the street. "You said this was supposed to be another swarm, but... I don't see any Fangirls."

Zexion took a step away from the rest of the group and began to sniff slightly, then crinkled his nose in disgust.

"No, there's definitely Fangirls here... I can smell them."

The Mexican man looked up for a second, scratched his chin, and then grinned; he had an idea.

"How about I lure 'em out with a little sandstorm?"

He raised his hand and began to stir up the sandy ground around him, but before he could get very far he was interrupted by a glare from Zexion.

"We're in the middle of the city, Roberto... and you've barely learned how to control your sand powers. You'd probably end up causing more damage than the Fangirls."

The short man turned his gaze back across the street, hoping to pick up some clue as to where the Fangirls were hiding. Upon noticing that the sand around his feet was still moving a little, he glanced back toward the masked man for a second.

"That means _no sandstorms._"

Axel snickered slightly, patting the larger man on the back before wandering off and resuming his search for any sign of Fangirl activity. There were some footprints in the layer of dust covering the pavement, but none of them were quite small enough to be Fangirl footprints. On top of that, they were now slightly distorted thanks to Roberto's powers moving the sand around.

Several minutes went by without any sign of Fangirls in the immediate area. Michiko was now passing her time by drawing in the sand with her fingers, while the large Mexican wrestler was simply sitting with his arms crossed on the side of the road. They had landed right in the spot where the center of the swarm was supposed to be, and yet it appeared that any Fangirls that _had_ been there were long gone before they arrived.

"Odd," Zexion said, raising his head slightly and sniffing the air again. "The scent of Fangirls just intensified. It's almost as strong as it was in the middle of the last swarm..."

Everyone was jolted back to attention when a high-pitched scream cut through the air. Michiko and Roberto stood up, while Axel summoned his chakrams out of swirling black energy and began twirling them on his fingers. Several blocks away from the Organization members, a young woman appeared out of an alley next to a casino, pursued by at least a dozen rabid, giggling Fangirls.

"Ah," Zexion said, brushing a strand of hair out of his face. "That's why."

The woman ran through traffic, ignoring the stoplights and narrowly avoiding several cars in the process. The Fangirls all skidded to a halt on the other side of the street, waiting for a bus to pass in front of them before resuming their charge. By the time they had crossed the street, their black-cloaked opponents were ready.

Zexion was sitting atop the Dimensional Hippievan, holding a thick, leather-bound book in one hand and pointing the other toward the giggling monsters. Michiko had taken up her battle stance at the side of the van, wielding a long sword with a greenish gem embedded in the hilt. Roberto had not summoned a weapon, instead simply balling his hands into fists and taking a deep breath as the Fangirls approached. And finally, Axel laughed and raised his bladed wheels in front of him in a defensive position.

Three Glomper Fangirls led the attack, leaping toward Axel with their arms outstretched and almost immediately being cut down. Four more Fangirls of a different type stood back a bit and took deep breaths while the rest of the swarm continued to charge.

They were met by the Mexican wrestler, who jumped forward and landed in front of the creatures so heavily that the first few actually stumbled back from the force of the impact. He held one hand to his chest, grinned, and introduced himself.

"Beware, Fangirls!", he said, striking a pose. "For now, you face the wrath of Roberto Alfonzo San José del Garbanzo!!"

Before he could manage to attack, the Fangirls in front of him split up and ran off to either side of him. The four that stayed behind before snapped forward, opening their mouths wide and releasing a concentrated blast of sound at their masked target. He was sent flying backward and yelled out in pain, his own voice being drowned out by the impossibly loud screams of the Fangirls. He collided with the side of the Hippievan, causing it to rock slightly and kicking up a cloud of dust around him as he slumped to the ground.

"Oh," Michiko said, raising her sword and glancing back toward the van before running toward the approaching swarm. "Those ones must be Squealer Fangirls."

One of Axel's chakrams came flying into the swarm, severing the head of another Glomper Fangirl and narrowly missing the row of Squealers. On top of the van, the short, blue-haired man waved his free hand in a circle and then pointed to the ground. The Fangirls suddenly stopped their charge as the ground in front of them appeared to open up into a bottomless pit--their simple minds were no match for Zexion's illusions. Michiko took advantage of their pause, rushing into the front lines of the Fangirls and cleaving through the entire group as she passed.

"Hmm," Zexion said, noticing that a barely-visible aura of energy had flickered into existence around the green-haired girl. "Did you really need to use your powers on _those?_"

She scratched the back of her head with the flat side of her weapon, a slightly embarrassed look appearing on her face.

"Er, well... I guess I kinda got carried away."

Zexion looked down to his book and sighed. Meanwhile, Roberto had managed to pick himself up after taking a direct hit from the four Squealers; his cloak was knocked off and his chest and back were scratched up slightly, but it was nothing the big man couldn't handle.

"Now, where was I... oh yeah, I remember. Stompin' your little Fangirl asses!"

The Squealers began to charge up for another blast of sound, but by the time they were ready to release it, their target was already upon them. The wrestler slammed one of his fists into the Fangirl on the far left, knocking it into the other three and sending them all tumbling to the ground like dominoes. Before they were able to get back on their feet, he had jumped onto them and slammed down elbow-first, crushing one of the Fangirls instantly and sending the other three flying in all directions. One rolled into the street and was promptly smashed by an oversized sport-utility vehicle.

The streets were showered in green light for a moment as nearly half of the Fangirls shattered into bits of computer code and disappeared. Still standing were the two injured Squealers, three Glompers, and a single Fangirl of a type that none of the group recognized.

The one odd Fangirl, with its strange, rainbow-colored hair that spiked out in random directions and distorted-looking face, was one of the strangest-looking things any of the black-cloaked group had ever seen. Even stranger was the fact that, so far, it hadn't actually attacked--only dodging attacks that came toward it and charging along with the rest of the swarm, only to back off at the last second.

"Wait," Zexion said, flipping through his book, "I think I remember seeing a Fangirl like that one before..."

Axel shrugged, throwing one chakram at a Glomper and the other toward the strange-looking new Fangirl. Just before the bladed wheels collided with their targets, something completely unexpected happened--a ripple of energy spread through the air, and the spiky-haired man's weapons suddenly transformed into pepperoni pizzas, splattering harmlessly against the two Fangirls.

"What the hell!?"

"Ah, here it is," Zexion mumbled, "This one... is called a Cracky Fangirl."

Axel attempted to re-summon his weapons, but only succeeded in calling forth two more large pizzas. _Hot_pizzas, too; if his fire-elemental powers had not also provided him with resistance to extreme heat, he would have screamed and dropped them immediately. The Cracky Fangirl giggled, then pointed its finger up toward Zexion. Another ripple of energy spread out from the creature's position, and the short man's heavy tome was magically replaced with a ridiculously oversized sandwich.

His one visible eye widened slightly; he thought that by sitting on top of the van, he would be outside of the Fangirl's range, but apparently this was not the case. Zexion tossed the sandwich aside and hopped down from the van, landing next to Michiko.

"As you can see... it has the power to render our weapons useless," he said, turning to face the girl. "I'd suggest you dematerialize your sword before it, too, is affected."

She nodded, and her weapon vanished in a flash of pale green light. Axel did the same, dematerializing the two pizzas at his side in the exact same way that he would have done for his real weapons. Roberto just laughed; for once, his lack of a weapon actually put him at an advantage.

He charged at the Fangirl, pulling one fist back as he ran and preparing to smack it in the face with a powerful right hook. Before he could get close enough, however, he was struck by another ripple of energy and suddenly fell off balance, tipping forward and smashing face-first into the pavement as his wrestling mask was transformed into a huge, bizarre-looking tiki mask that covered most of his torso.

"What!?", he yelled, having some difficulty lifting the heavy mask and walking at the same time, "I thought it only worked on our weapons!"

"Apparently not," Zexion muttered.

After a short pause, Michiko ran toward the swarm, staying away from the Cracky Fangirl and instead targeting the two remaining Squealers. Just as the Fangirls were about to unleash their scream attack once again, energy flared up around the green-haired girl's body and she began running faster than before, catching up to the creatures before they could even open their mouths.

She slammed the palm of her hand into one of the Fangirls, sending it flying backward into the street and splashing an oncoming minivan with green light and computer code. The other one took a spinning kick to the face, causing it to tumble across the pavement for a second before collapsing and shattering into a flurry of zeroes and ones.

Meanwhile, the remaining Glompers were headed in Axel's direction. Apparently, they thought they had a better chance at him now that his weapons were disabled; the trio of long-armed Fangirls giggled and made strange faces as they began to close in on their target. Right before the creatures got close enough to grab the spiky-haired man, he raised up his hands and laughed; a wall of fire erupted in front of him, instantly roasting all three of the Fangirls.

Michiko turned and ran after the Cracky Fangirl now, her powers still providing her with a massive boost in strength and speed. Possibly _too much _of a boost; she still hadn't mastered her power-amplifying ability, and had a habit of accidentally using a bit more than she actually needed. She swung her leg at the last Fangirl, smacking it in the shoulder and sending in spinning to the ground. As the Fangirl started to get back up, she ran toward it again and prepared to finish it off with a jump-kick to the head.

Before her attack could connect, another ripple of energy from the Fangirl came through the air, colliding with the aura of energy around her body. Her aura suddenly condensed into some sort of green, translucent substance; rather than kicking the Fangirl, she bounced off harmlessly and then wobbled to the ground.

"Oh, come on!", she groaned, struggling to get out of the jiggly green mess that she was now completely encased in. "You can't turn energy into _Jell-O!_"

"Hey, at least it's _green_ Jell-O," Axel joked. "You won't have to worry about washing the color out of your hair."

"Axel," Zexion said, stepping away from the van. "Be careful. If it can affect Michiko's powers to that degree, then it can probably do the same to ours."

The spiky-haired man shrugged.

"I don't have to be careful," he said, grinning. "I just have to fight that thing without using my powers. Shouldn't be too hard."

The Fangirl sent a ripple of energy at the spiky-haired man, causing his Organization uniform to transform into a trenchcoat and a pair of baggy pants with chains hanging from the pockets. He glanced at his new clothes for a second, shrugged, and continued his charge at the Fangirl.

Catching the creature off guard, he slammed his fist into its jaw, sending it stumbling backward into the busy street. A taxi came close to running it over, but it was transformed into a taxi-shaped balloon at the last second, floating up over the Fangirl before popping and sending its driver and two passengers tumbling to the ground. Axel glanced over at the three men for a second, then turned his attention back to the Cracky Fangirl after seeing that they had gotten to the sidewalk safely.

With cat-like reflexes, Axel dodged out of the way of another incoming car and faced the Cracky Fangirl again. It had attempted to cross the road to escape, but a long line of cars zipping by in the fast lane had blocked the creature's escape route; just as it turned around, Axel socked it in the face again, following up with an uppercut when it recovered from the first blow and began to stagger back toward him.

Raising both hands over his head, he prepared to finish off the Fangirl with a two-fisted overhead smash to the skull. In mid-swing, he was struck by another ripple of energy; instantly, his arms and legs were restrained as his clothes became a straitjacket, causing him to lose his balance and fall over on his back in the middle of the street.

The Fangirl struck a victory pose in front of the spot where Axel had landed, ignoring the eighteen-wheeler bearing down behind it. Already weakened from Axel's flurry of attacks, the Fangirl was no match for such a large truck--it was destroyed instantly, illuminating the entire road with green light and sending computer code flying.

"Axel!", Roberto yelled, his voice still slightly distorted by the giant tiki mask. "Get outta the road!" The spiky-haired man gasped as he looked up at the oncoming truck, still unable to move due to his transformed clothes. As the massive vehicle came closer, he was unable to do anything but scrunch his eyes shut and cringe. Just when the truck was inches away from him, a pale-green blur rushed across the street, scooping him up and depositing him safely on the other sidewalk before collapsing.

Finally, Axel opened his eyes, finding himself lying on the concrete next to an unconscious Michiko, her arm draped over his chest. He seemed completely confused by this sudden change of location, expecting to see his life flashing before his eyes--or at least the underside of a truck passing over him.

"Uh... huh? What just happened?"

"Michiko here just saved your ass," Roberto grunted.

The Fangirl's curse had worn off now, and his mask had reverted to its normal size and shape once again. After adjusting it slightly, he pointed to the green-haired girl on the sidewalk, who looked quite a bit less intimidating now that the aura of greenish energy had completely faded away from her body.

"Oh," he mumbled. "I figured that warm thing next to me was my own guts... y'know, hit by a truck and all."

"You _weren't _hit by a truck, Axel," Zexion groaned, covering his face with his palm and shaking his head. "Michiko used up all of her power in one burst, making her fast enough to get to you before the truck did."

"Huh... didn't know she could move that fast. Looks like Larxene's got some competition now."

"Not exactly," Zexion corrected him. "Larxene could have moved just as quickly if she wanted to. And, most likely, she wouldn't be quite as exhausted afterward."

"Yeah," Roberto added, "But knowing her, she'd let the truck clip ya a little before she got ya outta the way."

Zexion shuddered.

"Yes... that _does _sound like something Larxene would do. Be glad we didn't bring her along instead of Michiko."

* * *

After carrying Michiko safely across the road, the three conscious Organization members sat down on the pavement next to the Dimensional Hippievan, resting up a bit before their return trip. Axel was looking at the scribbly drawings the green-haired girl had left in the dust earlier, which had somehow survived the battle with the Fangirls. Roberto took a drink from a bottle of Mexican beer he had brought with him in the van's cooler, then passed a second bottle over to the red-haired man, who quickly snapped it up. Zexion shook his head when the wrestler offered him a third bottle; the larger man just shrugged and gave that one to Axel as well.

Their break was interrupted by the sound of footsteps, passing around the other side of the van toward them. Zexion stood up and prepared to summon his book, while Axel and Roberto carefully set their beer bottles aside in case they needed to get up and fight once again.

All three sighed with relief as their visitor turned out to be the young woman who they had seen before, running through the streets with the small swarm of Fangirls on her heels. Now that she wasn't running for her life, it was easier to see just what she looked like--she was a bit taller than Zexion, and had brown hair with red streaks that fell just short of her shoulders. She waved over to the group; only Axel waved back, grinning and offering her his extra beer. Hardly a second passed before Zexion smacked his hand out of the way, then stepped between him and the girl.

"Hi," the girl said, waving slightly. "You're Organization XIII, right?"

"Well, yes," Zexion answered, almost stuttering. "But... how did you know that? Our existence isn't exactly public knowledge."

"Oh," she said, pausing slightly. "I guess I forget to mention that... one of my friends was at the convention center that got attacked three days ago. He said these black-cloaked guys called 'Organization XIII' saved his life."

She suddenly stepped forward and pulled Zexion into a big hug, nearly smothering him in her breasts despite the fact that she wasn't much taller than he was. After a few very awkward seconds, the blue-haired man managed to break free; back down on the pavement, Roberto and Axel were both snickering so hard that they nearly spilled their beer.

"Looks like _Zexy's _got himself a fangirl," Axel laughed. "And not the bad kind."

_Zexy_ hung his head and groaned, partly from embarrassment and partly because he had already told Axel not to call him that at least a hundred times before. Once he had regained his composure, he brushed some of his hair out of his face and turned back toward the girl.

"Um," she said, glancing at the other two men and then at Michiko before turning her attention back to Zexion. "Can I join you?"

Zexion gave her an odd look, then nodded and sat down on the pavement with the others. Axel offered the girl a beer once again, earning him another glare from the blue-haired man. When she turned it down, the spiky-haired man made an exaggeratedly fake "hurt" face before gulping down the last of his own beer and opening up the bottle for himself.

"Well?", Zexion asked, looking up at where the girl was still standing. "You can sit here with us if you want."

She giggled, then leaned over until she was almost eye level with the little man.

"I didn't mean sitting down here with you, silly."

Axel and Roberto burst into fits of laughter again, only quieting down a little when Zexion shot them another death glare.

"What I meant," she continued, "Was... can I join Organization XIII?"

The two laughing men froze in mid-laugh, their mouths hanging open as the girl finished her unexpected sentence. Zexion just stared at her and blinked, his one visible eyebrow twitching slightly.

"You... well... you can't just walk up to us and _ask_ to join, you know..."

"Why not?"

"Because Organization XIII is composed entirely of those who have been attacked by Fangirls and survived," he answered, finally calming down again. "We can't just take in anyone off the street, especially those who are unlikely to ever develop powers like ours."

The girl reached over and placed her hand on his shoulder.

"But I _did_ survive an attack. Didn't you see me before?"

"Hmm... well," Zexion mumbled, glancing at her hand for a second before continuing. "I suppose we were paying more attention to that swarm of rabid Fangirls..."

Axel stood up and walked over to where Zexion was standing.

"Well?", he asked, glancing at the girl for a second before turning to look at the shorter man beside him. "How about it? You think she'd make it through the training?"

"It's hard to tell," Zexion answered, glancing back at the girl and sniffing the air slightly. "She does seem to be telling the truth about being attacked by the Fangirls... she's absolutely covered in their scent. I haven't seen one with such a high degree of Fangirl exposure since you found Demyx."

"What's that got to do with anything?", Roberto asked, scratching his head.

"I'm not sure," the blue-haired man replied, turning his head in the Mexican's direction. "But based on what I've seen from Xigbar, Demyx, Marluxia and myself, it seems that those who were directly attacked by Fangirls may develop their powers faster than those who weren't."

"Hmm..." The girl finally let go of Zexion's shoulder and began staring off into space. "I wonder what kind of powers I'd have?"

"Well, it's hard to tell before you start training," Zexion began to explain. "But usually, a person's powers have some connection to their personality, their hobbies, or something along those lines."

"For example, Axel here worked as a cook for a while before joining us." He pointed toward the spiky-haired man, who was in the middle of guzzling down his second beer. "And now, he has fire-elemental powers."

Zexion sat back down and flipped through his book, now restored to its original form after the Cracky Fangirl's death. He couldn't think of any logical reason to tell the girl she couldn't join the Organization--she had been attacked by a swarm of Fangirls, after all, and seemed interested in joining the group after they had saved her. She had even managed to outrun the swarm without being even slightly injured, something that very few recruits had done. And yet, he had an unexplainable feeling that letting her in wouldn't be such a good idea.

While she talked with Axel and Roberto about various things, the blue-haired man sat with his book in his lap and quietly thought everything over. Other than the vague feeling that she somehow was not suited for the Organization, the only thing he could think of was the girl's less-than-ideal first impression. And, like most first impressions tend to be, it would probably be proven inaccurate later.

"If you want to join our Organization," he spoke, dematerializing his book and standing up again, "Then you should probably tell us your name."

"Kyôshajo Kisaki."

Roberto looked completely stumped, as if someone had just walked up to him and started a conversation in a language he couldn't understand a word of.

"Whuh?"

"Oh, I forgot to mention... that's the Japanese way to say it," she said, glancing over to the large man before turning back to Zexion. "Kisaki is my first name."

"That's odd," the short man said, briefly looking over her again. "You don't really _look_ Japanese..."

"Well, my dad's only half-Japanese," she replied almost instantly. "And my mom's white. I guess they just liked Japanese names for some reason."

"Ah. I see."

A few moments passed before Axel prodded the blue-haired man in the ribs, asking him the same question as before in a "whisper" that was easily loud enough for everyone else to hear.

"So, is she in or not?"

"Well... she _does _seem to meet all the qualifications," Zexion mumbled. "As long as she's able to handle the basic training... I can't think of any valid reason not to let her join."

Kisaki smiled, grabbing Zexion and halfway smothering him in a hug once again.

"We were just about to leave," he said, pulling himself away from the girl's chest as quickly as he could.

"You can ride the van back to the base with us if you want," Axel added, sliding open the door.

As Zexion walked over and hopped back into the driver's seat, Roberto lifted the still-unconscious Michiko and carefully strapped her into the middle seats of the van, then sat down in one of the back seats next to Axel. The new recruit climbed into the van after him, taking the last empty seat in the back before the doors shut and the van began to move.

Before long, the black-cloaked group was flying back home through the swirling void--and, for the first time in almost a month, they were going to come back with one more member than they had when they left.


	7. Grinding Gears

**CHAPTER 6**  
_~ Grinding Gears ~_

Kisaki, now wearing a shiny black Organization XIII uniform instead of her original clothes, walked down the hallway toward one of the large training rooms. The day before, she had been introduced to the rest of the Organization and officially taken in as a member; now, she was about to begin her first day of training.

She walked up to the open door and headed inside, passing several other recent recruits on her way in. Only one member of this group--a taller girl with bright-red hair and tattoo-like markings under her eyes--wore one of the Organization's trademark black cloaks; the rest, like Kisaki, had not received this part of the uniform just yet.

The in-training members talked amongst themselves as they waited for their superior officers to arrive and start their training. They didn't have to wait very long--almost immediately, a yellow blur shot across the room and stopped inches in front of them, revealing itself to be a short, thin woman with blond hair that stuck up in a way that reminded the newbies of a cockroach's antennae. She smirked and giggled as the new members jumped a little in surprise, then zipped away from them as quickly as she had arrived, stopping on the other side of the room.

She was soon joined by two others--Xaldin and Axel, who both walked lazily into the room, laughing and cracking jokes as they went. Whereas Xaldin quieted down and became a bit more serious upon entering the training room, the spiky-haired man walking next to him either wasn't paying attention or didn't really care. He continued to goof off until he finally noticed that all of the new recruits were staring right at him.

"Er... whoops, sorry about that..."

He scratched his head and glanced around the room for a second.

"Let's see... we've got Xaldin, Larxene, and me," he mumbled, looking across the room to the rest of the older members, then turning toward the group that they would be responsible for training. He scratched his head, then turned back to face Xaldin and Larxene again.

"Hey, uh... where's Zexion?"

"Probably still workin' on that investigation," Xaldin answered. "Last thing I heard, they were sayin' that whoever deleted those files must've been inside the base."

"Huh. I figured he skipped out 'cuz he didn't want to train that Kisaki girl."

"That doesn't sound much like the Zexion I know," the hairy elf replied. "Guy's always so serious about his work, y'know? He's not gonna just skip training, even if he's not too happy about Xemnas picking him to train the girl."

"Zexy should be able to handle her," Larxene said. "He's the one who trained Michiko, remember? Whatever this new girl can do, it can't be much worse than those ridiculous energy surges Ms. Green-Hair kept having back when she couldn't control her powers..."

After a few more minutes of waiting, the blue-haired man finally arrived. He was carrying his book, flipping through it as he walked and stopping on a blank page just as he reached the outside of the training room's door. He pointed his finger at the page and made a series of writing motions, and words rapidly began to appear on the paper until nearly half of the page was full. Then, closing the book and dematerializing it in a flash of swirling black and blue energy, Zexion entered the room.

"Sorry I'm late... had to finish up my notes on today's investigation."

Xaldin lightly elbowed Axel in the ribs and grinned as Zexion himself confirmed his guess as to what was taking him so long.

"Okay," Larxene said, taking a step toward the group of younger members. "Is everyone ready to start their training?"

The group mumbled and nodded slightly.

"Well, then... first of all, we should do some stretching so we don't hurt ourselves too much."

She dropped to the floor and into a perfect split almost instantly, causing the one male among the trainees to cringe. Axel and Xaldin snickered, while Zexion just shook his head and sighed.

* * *

Once the new recruits had finished stretching, it was time for the actual training to begin. Each of the new members walked off to a different section of the room, where they were joined by the member of Organization XIII who was responsible for their training.

Kisaki bounced over to a corner of the room where Zexion was standing. A small, black-haired elf girl followed Xaldin over to the other side of the room, and the tall girl with the strange markings on her face walked over near the middle of the room with Axel. Finally, the only male member of the group grumbled as he passed the others on the way to where Larxene was waiting.

"Why the hell do I have to get stuck with that bitch? I mean, how's some little _girl_ gonna teach me how to fight?"

Besides a pair of annoyed glances from Zexion and the red-haired girl, everyone pretty much ignored him. He would find out exactly how wrong he was soon enough--there was no need to point it out to him now.

Larxene frowned slightly as her trainee approached her. He was about a head taller than the tiny woman, and had slightly spiky hair that stuck up further in the middle; he seemed to have gotten over his moment of grumbling, as his mouth was now twisted into a cocky smirk.

"Okay," Larxene said, taking a battle stance. "The first thing I want to do is see how you fight. If you already know the basics, good! Less work for me."

"Well, usually I don't hit girls," he said, balling his hands into fists. "But if you _really_ want me to..."

The man continued to smirk, and held his fists up in a way that seemed more fitting for a street thug than a member of Organization XIII. Larxene rolled her eyes and motioned for him to go ahead and attack her.

"One more thing: don't hold back," she added, waving one finger at him. "You'll regret it."

He grunted slightly, then pulled his hand back and threw a punch with all of his strength. It was easily the strongest punch he was capable of--but to Larxene, it was as if someone was tossing a pillow at her in slow motion. She yawned and held up her hand, extending a single finger just before his fist finally came within a few inches of her.

The punch was stopped in its tracks, with its intended target not even flinching in response. A drop of blood trickled down from a spot between two of the man's knuckles, where Larxene's fingernail had collided with his fist. When she yanked her hand away, the bleeding increased and a small but fairly deep cut became visible.

"Gah... damn! My hand!"

"Yep," Larxene said, raising her middle finger and licking the blood off of the nail. "That hurt, didn't it?"

"What the hell was that for, you stupid bi--"

Before he could complain any further, he was struck in the face with the back of Larxene's hand, sending him spinning to the floor before he even realized what was happening.

"That's what happens when you go jumping head-first into fights you can't win," she explained, walking past him with her hands on her hips. "So try not to do that anymore, okay?"

He groaned, coughed, and started to pull himself off the floor. He found that he now had trouble standing, and muttered a string of curses under his breath.

"You... stupid... bitch..."

After that, standing was no longer a concern--he was sent _flying _into the air as Larxene's foot smashed into his side. Just seconds before his landing, she appeared in front of him and backhanded him again, sending him crashing into a large pile of beanbag chairs that were stacked up against one of the walls. Larxene watched the beanbags for a few moments, looking for any sign of movement. There was none, unless one of the beanbag chairs falling down from the top of the pile and hitting the floor with a _thump_ counted.

"Awww, he's done already?", she whined. "I never get to have any fun in these training sessions..."

On the other side of the room, the female elf was rapidly punching Xaldin's torso while he just stood back and took every hit. Eventually, however, he actually began to block or avoid the blows--despite being less than half his size, she was actually quite strong, and his chest was beginning to get a little sore after being struck dozens of times in a row.

"Not too bad," he said, narrowly dodging another punch and then bending backward out of the way of the uppercut that followed. "You'd probably be able to handle a Fangirl or two already."

After another barrage of punches, she yelled and aimed a kick directly at the larger elf's groin. Xaldin dodged and caught her foot with his left hand, using the force of her attack to flip the tiny girl over onto her back and pin her to the floor.

"Hey hey hey, none o' that..."

As Xaldin released the girl from his hold and stood back up, he spun around as the sound of a small explosion from the middle of the room reached his ears. Axel was holding his weapons, and the girl he was responsible for training had apparently summoned hers as well. There was a silvery-colored spiked ring attached to her right wrist, surrounded by a faint aura of energy that was being constantly transferred into a pistol in her hand. The smaller elf stared over at the scene for a few seconds, then turned back toward her training partner.

"Hey, how'd she do that?"

"Huh?"

He turned to look at the fight between Axel and the red-haired girl. She was blasting away at him with her gun, but he managed to deflect all of the bullets by spinning his chakrams rapidly in his hands.

"What, y'mean summoning her weapon? Well, all of us can do that. Just takes a little practice..."

A bullet whizzed by his head, nearly grazing his ear before he reached up and snatched it out of the air with his bare hand.

"And speaking of practice," he said, tossing the crumpled bullet aside, "She needs to work on her aim."

Kisaki had also taken notice of this new development. She stopped in the middle of a punch to turn and stare at the other girl's weapon, letting her hand fall limply to her side as she completely ignored her superior officer.

"Ooooh," she said, staring a little longer before turning back to Zexion. "When do I get one of those?"

"When you've gotten further in your training," the short man sighed. "You haven't even finished throwing a single punch yet... something always distracts you in the middle, whether it's someone else in the room, someone passing by in the hall, or even a roach scurrying out from underneath the bleachers."

"So... you want me to punch you?"

"This is combat training," he replied, "So yes, you are going to have to attack me in some way if you want to learn anything."

Zexion braced for an attack, but he never suspected what was coming--Kisaki slipped past his defenses without any trouble at all and punched him square in the face, hitting him so hard that he staggered backward. He stood, slightly dazed, for a second before regaining his composure and leaping back toward the girl.

While Zexion was not a master of hand-to-hand combat by any stretch of the imagination, he was still stronger than the average human and had developed some basic skills during his years in the Organization. He lunged at Kisaki and jabbed with his left hand, following up with a stronger punch with his right. The girl easily avoided both, hopping away just before the blows connected.

"Now I see why you weren't injured when that Fangirl swarm attacked you," the blue-haired man mumbled in between swings. "Your speed and reflexes are close to Axel's level already."

Zexion threw another punch, and Kisaki dodged and countered, clocking him in the jaw with an uppercut that sent him up off the ground for a moment before he fell to the floor.

Immediately, the other three high-ranking officers stopped what they were doing and stared over at Zexion's corner of the room. He was lying on his back, still stunned from the force of the last punch. Standing a few feet away was Kisaki, who was looking around the room innocently as if nothing had happened. Axel's jaw dropped.

"Damn," the spiky-haired man muttered. "Where'd that girl learn how to fight?"

"Well, I picked a lot of it up from violent video games," she answered, rocking back and forth on her feet a little. "I learned that uppercut from Mortal Kombat. Looks like I must've gotten enough practice to be really good at it..."

* * *

In Zexion's absence, Vexen and Lexaeus had continued the investigation on their own. Unfortunately, they hadn't gotten very far. Other than the basic facts--that the Fangirl Detection System couldn't have been accessed at all from outside the base, and that there had not been any unauthorized individuals present in the computer room itself--they had not been able to uncover much of anything.

"It's an unfortunate thought," Lexaeus said, "But it's beginning to look like we may have a spy within the Organization."

"A spy for _who? _The Fangirls have only just recently begun to demonstrate any sort of intelligent behavior."

Vexen paced back and forth, reading over his notes again and again.

"And although we _have_ made a few enemies among the world governments, none of their pitiful agents would have even the _slightest_ chance of infiltrating us..."

"And on top of that, _no one_ outside the Organization is aware of the methods used to test new recruits. It would be impossible for any government thug to simply _cheat_ his way through the training, even if he did manage to join in the first place."

The old man paced furiously for another few seconds before Lexaeus spoke up once again.

"A spy doesn't necessarily have to be sent in by some outside force," he said, turning to look through the barrier and out into the hallway as a group of talkative younger members passed by.

"In this situation, at least... it seems far more likely that the outside force has convinced one of our own to turn against us."

* * *

After a short break for lunch, the Organization members filed back into the training room. Larxene was sitting on one of the beanbag chairs propped up against the wall, propping her chin up on her hand and looking extremely bored. After she had quickly knocked out the guy she was supposed to be training, he had been taken way for medical treatment. This left Larxene with nothing to do but sit and watch the others, and she clearly wasn't too happy about it.

Xaldin was sitting cross-legged on the floor across from the girl he was responsible for teaching, explaining the process of summoning weapons to her. Axel and the tallest of the girls had already resumed their training, though neither of the two redheads had brought their weapons back out just yet.

And, once again, Zexion was the last to enter the room. He headed over to the corner where Kisaki was already waiting, carrying a small black briefcase with the Organization's symbol embossed into it on both sides.

"What's in there?"

The blue-haired man said nothing--he only unlocked the briefcase and popped it open. Sitting inside the container was an oddly-shaped ring of silvery metal, with spikes around the edges shaped exactly like those on the cross-points of the Organization's emblem.

"This," Zexion said, holding up the briefcase to show her, "Is called a Zero Gear. It's a technology that Xemnas and I developed in order to help new members draw out their weapons."

He carefully plucked the fragile-looking object out of its case, holding it up with both hands. Kisaki stared at it like a cat watching something dangle just out of reach, with a look on her face that suggested she might try to leap forward and grab it at any moment.

"Generally, we don't even _consider_ the use of a Zero Gear until a member has completed their second or third day of training," he continued. "But, based on your performance today... you should already be capable of using it without any problems."

"So, um... how do I get it to work?"

"Put it on your wrist," he answered, handing the gear to her. "Like how Mæja was wearing it earlier, when she was shooting at Axel with that gun of hers."

"Oh."

She slipped her hand through the hole in the center, and then let go of it when it reached her wrist, expecting it to hang down like a bracelet. Instead, it stopped and hovered in midair, keeping itself from touching her arm no matter how much she moved it around. A moment later, the gear became surrounded by a faint aura of pale greenish energy.

"Hmm... that's odd," Zexion said, "I haven't even taught you how to focus your power into it yet, but it's already starting to build up energy..."

He paced back and forth for a few seconds, scrunching his eyes shut and thinking about something. Kisaki just held her arm up in front of her face and stared at the Zero Gear as it hovered around her wrist, flickering with green energy.

"Now that I think of it, this _has_happened before," he said, turning to look back at the girl. "Several times, actually... the first was when Xemnas put one on himself to test it."

"We thought it was a glitch in the technology until it happened again, when Marluxia was going through his training... and if what I've heard from some of the others is correct, it's happened with two or three of the newer members as well."

"So... what's it mean when it does that? Is it a bad thing?"

"No. Based on what I've seen before, this is only an indication that you have already used your powers at some point in your life before joining us."

Kisaki's mouth opened slightly and her eyes widened; for just a fraction of a second, she almost seemed to be afraid of something, but she quickly calmed down as Zexion continued talking.

"You most likely activated them unconsciously, without even realizing that you had done anything. This should actually make your training easier... if it has any effect at all."

The blue-haired man took notice of her brief look of fear, but decided not to mention it. Many of the new recruits had suffered through some rather disturbing experiences when they had first encountered the Fangirls, and bringing them up in the middle of combat training was rarely a good idea.

"Now... try to focus on your arm. The Zero Gear is already drawing small amounts of energy in from all over your body, but if you just sit there and let it do all the work by itself, it could take hours to summon your weapon."

Kisaki nodded and closed her eyes, holding out her arm in front of her and flexing it. Zexion smiled slightly; it reminded him of the strange poses that Michiko had tried back when she was just beginning her training.

"Try to picture energy from all over your body flowing into your arm," he continued, walking her through the process. The aura of energy around the Zero Gear flared up suddenly, causing Axel to turn to see what had happened. Right as the spiky-haired man stopped paying attention, his training partner leaped forward and smashed her knee into his head, sending him falling to the floor and clutching his face in pain.

"You're doing well," Zexion said, ignoring Axel's antics and focusing on Kisaki's facial expressions as the aura of greenish energy grew stronger. She didn't seem to be exerting herself at all, which was very unusual for new members--especially on their first day of training.

"Now, imagine the Zero Gear as a sort of gateway... make the energy flow through that gate and into your hand."

The aura around the gear slowly began to spread, covering the girl's hand as well and flaring up even larger than before.

"Looks like you've got it. Now, make sure you don't let any of the extra energy slip around the outside of the gate, or..."

Something about the air in the room seemed to change as the glow around Kisaki's hand grew brighter. A strange buzzing sound seemed to radiate out from her, and vibrations rippled through the floor and walls, causing the windows to rattle and small objects to fall off of tables. The pile of beanbag chairs toppled over, nearly burying Larxene. Zexion's one visible eye widened, and he almost yelped as he ran and dove to the floor, rushing to get out of the area directly in front of the girl's arm.

There was a loud _crack,_and one of the spikes of the Zero Gear snapped off and went flying. Cracks began to spread across the rest of the object, and more pieces were thrown off in all directions as the girl's power continued to overflow. Finally, the entire Zero Gear shattered, and a blast of green energy roared from Kisaki's outstretched hand.

When the smoke from the explosion cleared, the air in the room had returned to normal, and the buzzing and vibrating had all stopped. There was now a gaping hole in the wall, easily large enough to drive the Dimensional Hippievan through. Two windows, the far ends of some bleachers, and a water fountain had been completely disintegrated. Zexion stared into the hole from his position on the floor, but couldn't see how far back it went. Though he wasn't a particularly religious person, he still prayed that the blast hadn't gone into any inhabited areas of the base.

Kisaki remained standing, though the recoil from the blast had pushed her back several feet and left deep scrapes behind in the training room's floor. She took a deep breath, wobbled for a second, and then collapsed.

"Larxene," Zexion groaned, standing up and brushing himself off. "You should probably go get Marluxia..."

He paused, then turned and added one more thing just before the blond woman passed through the door and left the training room.

"And try to bring back Lexaeus too, if you can... we're going to be needing some walls repaired."


	8. Exorcism

**CHAPTER 7**  
_~ Exorcism ~_

Lexaeus stood in the middle of the now-empty training room, just staring ahead at the massive hole in the wall and frowning slightly. Zexion had already explained the situation to him, but still something just didn't seem right about it. It was not the first time that a new member had accidentally overloaded and destroyed a Zero Gear during their training, but none of the previous incidents had ever caused _this_ much damage.

The large man paused and remembered Demyx's second day of training; though he himself had not trained Demyx, he had been in the training room watching on the day when Xigbar had given him one of the experimental first-generation Zero Gears. Though he was only a teenager at the time, he quickly figured out how to focus his power into the device. So quickly, in fact, that Xigbar didn't get a chance to warn him about what might happen if he did it the wrong way.

When the water-elemental energy surging through the Zero Gear became too great to be contained, a geyser of water rushed out and shattered one of the room's windows, raining glass down onto the training room's floor. Even worse, the recoil of the blast was too much for young Demyx's hand--several bones were broken by the sheer force of it, and he was unable to continue his training for several weeks.

He stepped closer to the hole in the wall, removing his right glove and then running his bare hand along the edge. The damage to the wall seemed far too random to be caused by a single large blast like what Zexion had described; the edges were rough and jagged in some spots but perfectly smooth in others. Lexaeus' hand came upon a patch of wall that seemed to be composed of small stones packed tightly together, and took a step inside the tunnel for a closer look.

"Strange," he mumbled to himself. "There were never any walls in this base composed of this kind of stone..."

* * *

Vexen tapped away at one of the computers in his lab, setting up everything that he needed to begin his investigation into Roxas' strange burst of power. On the other side of the room stood Marluxia, holding a bottle of some strange liquid, and Zexion, who was flipping through the pages of his book and apparently not paying much attention to anything else.

Out in the hallway, several younger members peeked through the windows to Vexen's lab in an attempt to see what was going on. As the scientist's initial scan had not even started yet, it only took a few minutes before most of them grew bored and left.

"Almost ready," Vexen said, punching in a few more numbers into the computer and adjusting various scanning devices so that they were hovering around the small chair where Roxas was sitting. He looked up at them and gulped slightly, then nearly jumped out of his chair as a pair of shackles snapped shut around his wrists.

"Don't worry about those," the old scientist muttered between adjustments to the other devices. "They're only to make sure you don't hurt anyone if we manage to trigger another one of your outbursts."

"Hmm... do you think they'll be strong enough to hold him?", Zexion asked, not even looking up from his book.

Vexen scoffed at this and spun around to face him, but could see nothing but the book hovering in front of the shorter man's face. He glared and shook his head for a second, then answered anyway.

"_Of course _they'll hold him. These are no ordinary shackles, Zexion... have you already forgotten that we once used these to restrain Saix before he learned to properly control his powers?"

No one else had any questions, so Vexen continued to adjust the various devices until they were all positioned perfectly. Roxas had calmed down slightly, but the sight of the strange machines dangling down from the ceiling all around him was still a bit unnerving.

"Now," Vexen said, turning and stepping away from his computer, "It's time to begin the initial scan. Roxas... just stay still and try to relax as much as possible."

Relaxing was easier said than done; Roxas couldn't help but be a little nervous about being strapped into a chair while a mad scientist poked at him with all kinds of strange machinery. Anyone who _wouldn't_ be nervous in such a situation would have to be either unconscious or insane.

A device lowered itself from the ceiling and hovered up and down in front of Roxas, illuminating his body with a pale blue light as it passed over him. Once it reached his feet, it came back up and exposed him to the strange light again, beeping occasionally as it went. Vexen watched the results appear on the computer monitor, then moved on to the next test almost immediately.

The boy felt something prick his arm, but before he was able to turn his head to see it, the needle--attached to a robotic arm--had already pulled away with a small blood sample. A second arm snipped a single strand of hair from his head, once again pulling away so quickly that he barely saw it before it was gone. A third mechanical arm, this one holding a device that resembled a pair of binoculars, lowered itself in front of him and moved forward until it was just a fraction of an inch away from his face.

"Don't close your eyes," Vexen said, stopping Roxas just before he was about to blink. The machine stayed in place for nearly a minute, then quickly pulled away.

The computer beeped, and immediately its screen was flooded with information. Vexen looked over the data carefully, comparing the DNA collected from Roxas' hair and blood samples with those he had taken previously. After seeing no significant changes there, he moved on to the rest of the screen, where the results of the eye and body scans were.

"Hmm," he mumbled, "Roxas' energy levels appear to be relatively normal... all except for the first few moments after the scanner was activated."

He moved aside so that Marluxia and Zexion could see the results, pointing out a high point in the chart toward the beginning. It quickly dropped off again after that, returning to the normal level within a second or two of the initial spike.

"Well, it's not the kind of power surge Lexaeus reported," Zexion said, finally closing his book as he walked over to the computer. "But it's certainly _something._"

"That's far too large of an increase to be natural," Marluxia added after glancing over the chart. "I would have expected a small spike in energy toward the beginning, but nothing like this..."

As Marluxia and Zexion turned to watch Roxas, Vexen saved the results and then cleared the screen in preparation for the next test.

"And now," he said, taking a step away from the computer. "The hard part."

* * *

Lexaeus stood in the middle of a hallway on the other side of the training room, continuing his examination of the damage that Kisaki had caused. The sides of the holes had become stranger and stranger as he explored them further--where the first few feet of the tunnel was made of various types of stone, he found patches of mud, clay, and even wood embedded into the wall further down. At one point, he even encountered a section of the wall that appeared to be made of solid ice. Something had gone very, very wrong here.

None of these materials were used during the construction of the base. Lexaeus knew this better than anyone--it was he who had built these halls. At first he had worked by hand, with help from the other founding members. Later, when they had all mastered their powers, he uprooted rocks from the mountains themselves and re-shaped them into walls and doors. There was no part of the underground hideout that Lexaeus was unfamiliar with--and yet, with every few feet of the tunnel, he came upon another patch of _something_ that wasn't supposed to be there.

The huge man knelt down and scooped up a small sample of bizarre-looking red crystals from another warped patch in the wall. He jotted down something on a clipboard, then stashed away the crystals inside a plastic bag before continuing into the next tunnel.

Before he could get very far, he heard footsteps in the hallway behind him. He turned around to see who it was, and before long Zagan walked out in front of the tunnel's entrance.

"Whoa," he said, suddenly stopping in mid-stride as he noticed the gaping holes in both sides of the hallway. "What happened _here?_"

"One of the new members overloaded a Zero Gear," Lexaeus responded, taking a few steps out of the tunnel.

"So... which one of 'em was it?", Zagan asked, scratching his head. "None of the newbies seemed all that powerful to me..."

"Kisaki."

If Zagan's facial expression hadn't been partially hidden by his reflective glasses, he would have looked a bit confused. He continued to scratch his head for a second, and then asked yet another question.

"Kisaki, huh? Who's that, the one Zexion recruited the other day?"

"Yes," Lexaeus replied, "She was able to overpower him in close combat without much trouble, so he decided to move on to Zero Gear training."

Zagan paced back and forth slightly, stroking his beard with one hand and glancing over at the holes in the walls every few seconds. He seemed to be thinking about something, though it was hard to tell what.

"So... what kind of power does she have?"

Lexaeus, for once, shrugged.

"I'm not sure yet," he answered. "Zexion and the others reported a blast of pale green energy that disintegrated anything in its path... but the damaged walls show signs that it was something far more complicated."

"Huh," Zagan mumbled, taking a few steps into the nearest tunnel. He squatted down and took a closer look at the wall on the inside, stopping when he found a patch of what appeared to be shag carpet embedded in the stone.

"You mean all this other stuff stuck in the wall?"

"Exactly. A simple energy blast would not have such bizarre side-effects."

Lexaeus went back to his investigation of the tunnels, but paused for a moment as Zagan began to walk away. Just before he had reached the next corner of the hallway, Lexaeus stepped back out of the tunnel and spoke.

"Zagan... shouldn't you be busy operating the Fangirl Detection System?"

He paused and adjusted his glasses before turning to answer.

"I'm on my way over there right now," he said. "Just wanted to see what was going on over here first before I have to get back to work, that's all."

"Hmm."

Having no further questions, the larger man returned to his own job, collecting a small sample of the carpet-like substance embedded in the wall before continuing onward. It was going to be a long day, even with Lexaeus' seemingly-endless patience.

* * *

"Here's how this is going to work, Roxas," Vexen began to explain. "Zexion will use his illusion powers to generate stressful scenarios for you, and I will measure your reactions to each one. We will be attempting to draw out another surge of power, similar to the one you displayed during the Fangirl swarm four days ago."

He paced back and forth in front of the boy's chair as he continued.

"You will not, at any point, be exposed to any real danger. Any injuries you appear to sustain, and any pain you may feel, will be nothing more than the effects of Zexion's powers, and all of these illusionary stimuli will cease to exist the instant that Zexion chooses to change the scenario."

Roxas gulped again. He hadn't realized that Zexion's powers could make him feel pain, and the fact that nothing was _actually_ going to harm him wasn't very reassuring.

"Now... do you understand what I just told you?"

"I, uh... I think so..."

"Good. Zexion, begin the first scenario."

The shorter man nodded, opening up his book and flipping through until he found a page with several pictures on the upper half. He raised one hand in Roxas' direction, closing his eyes and concentrating as shadowy blue-black energy began to pour out from his fingers and completely surround a small area around the boy's chair.

To Roxas, Vexen's lab suddenly seemed to fade away and disappear. He was now sitting in a small, dimly-lit room with a few pieces of furniture. The room's door was open slightly, but no matter how hard he tried to get up and walk over to the door, he found himself unable to move. He glanced at his arms and found that they were handcuffed to a bedpost--he was sitting on the edge of one of the room's two beds.

The door creaked as it slowly began to open. A clawed hand--which he instantly recognized as the hand of a Fangirl--appeared from behind it, soon followed by the creature's face. Roxas struggled against the handcuffs, but still had no luck; the chains would not budge, no matter how much of his strength he used to pull against them. The Fangirl entered the room, creeping toward him slowly with its claws outstretched. Though he knew that it was only an illusion, he couldn't help but panic.

"Stay away from me!"

It only giggled in response, just like every other Fangirl that Roxas had ever encountered. It picked up speed, lunging toward the boy. He shifted his body slightly, managing to narrowly dodge the first attack, but the second swipe from the Fangirl scraped across his chest and left three scratches behind. He glanced down and saw blood beginning to soak through his shirt, which was not the one he had on before.

"Get back!"

Roxas lashed out with one of his feet, striking the Fangirl in the knee and causing it to stumble backward. It hissed slightly, then giggled again as it moved in for a second attack.

Now he was desperate; kicking and yelling at the Fangirl wouldn't work for very long. In the heat of the moment, he completely forgot that the entire scene was nothing more than one of Zexion's illusions--he concentrated on his hands, and his twin katanas appeared in a flash, a sight which caused the Fangirl to back off slightly.

Roxas flailed his hands as much as he could with the handcuffs still pinning them down, managing to keep the Fangirl at a distance but not accomplishing much else. Whenever the Fangirl began to creep closer, he would lash out with one or both of his blades, and the creature would hop backward again to dodge. This continued for several minutes, until Roxas felt his wrists beginning to grow tired from the combination of swinging his weapons and struggling against the metal handcuffs.

The Fangirl noticed the opening and pounced, leaping at Roxas with both hands held out in front of it. The tips of its claws had already started to pierce his skin before he had a chance to slash upward with both of his swords, splitting it into three sections and killing it instantly.

For a while, Roxas just sat against the edge of the bed, breathing heavily and watching as the flow of blood from his chest began to slow down and finally stop. A familiar voice from outside of the hotel room mumbled a few words, and then called out much more clearly.

"Begin second scenario."

The dimly-lit hotel room faded away into a dark void, which was quickly replaced by a different room. Well, maybe "room" wasn't exactly the best word for it--upon a closer look, Roxas noticed that although there were three brick walls around him, there was no ceiling above--only a starry night sky. He glanced around for a second before realizing that he was in a dark alley, with his hands duct-taped to a pipe along one of the walls.

He tried to pull his arms free of the tape, but found that no amount of strength was able to break it. Using his swords to hack away at it was not any more successful; though they left a few thin slash marks on the surface of the tape, they weren't able to cut deeply enough to make much of a difference. Just when he thought that things couldn't get any worse, he heard the creepy, giggling voices of Fangirls approaching from somewhere in the distance.

Roxas tried to stay perfectly still, hoping that the Fangirls would not notice his presence. The only thing that could be heard in the alley, besides the giggles and squeals of the approaching swarm, was the sound of the boy's breathing. For several minutes, this kept up--and then, finally, the Fangirlish voices became so close that Roxas could hear every word clearly, whenever they actually used words instead of meaningless squeals.

They poured into the alley, as if they knew Roxas was there long before they could see him. Before he could even attempt to attack them, he was completely surrounded; their claws cut into him repeatedly, and several of them latched onto his arms and legs, draining his energy away as their grip became tighter and tighter.

"Let... go!"

He swiped at the nearest Fangirl with one of his weapons, but only managed to give it a minor cut across one finger. Another Fangirl grabbed his hand and began to wrench the white-bladed katana away from him, while a third pinned down his second weapon. He tried to fight them off, but there were just too many of them--at least five were latched onto him, and there were even more surrounding him, constantly slashing away at his chest and face.

As more and more Fangirls threw themselves onto him, Roxas felt himself slipping into unconsciousness. And, for just a second, he saw a flash of bright blue eyes, piercing through the illusionary world around him...

* * *

Vexen stared, eyes bulging and jaw dropped, at the computer screen. Roxas' energy had spiked once again, this time reaching a level far beyond even the result from the initial tests--and, what's more, it had shifted into a pattern that was completely different from Roxas' normal power signature.

"We've done it," the scientist gasped. "That sudden, unexplainable flood of power... it's happening again."

From within the cloud of Zexion's illusion, Roxas' voice yelled out. Except, it _wasn't_ Roxas' voice--it was distorted somehow, sounding as if a second voice had been superimposed over the boy's own.

"Let... him... go!"

Vexen spun around, making a strange face as he stared into the bluish-black dome of energy, seeing Roxas flail around wildly with both of his weapons.

"_Him?_"

"Strange," Marluxia added, "Is Roxas... referring to himself in third person?"

"I... am not... Roxas!"

A scream filled the room, and this time Roxas' voice was completely absent. In its place was another voice, one that seemed almost familiar to everyone in the room, even though it was so distorted that it was barely recognizable.

"You!", the new voice called out. Roxas' head whipped around to face Zexion, apparently seeing through the illusion. "_You're_ the one doing this!"

Vexen snapped back to attention, as if he had suddenly realized exactly what was happening. Rushing to get everything done before it was too late, he quickly barked out orders to each of his fellow Organization members.

"Zexion, end scenario! Marluxia, restrain Roxas' weapons with your plants and prepare to administer the serum!"

Marluxia held out one hand, and a swirl of pink and green energy surrounded his fingers for a moment before shooting out toward Roxas. The beam of energy solidified into a thick, thorny vine as it flew, splitting into several smaller vines and wrapping around the blades and hilts of both swords. Roxas struggled, slicing through some of the vines in the process, but he wasn't able to cut enough of them before the pink-haired man yanked the vines back, disarming him and sending the two swords flying backward into the wall.

Zexion was quick to act as well, slamming his book shut and opening his eyes. The dome of shadowy energy quickly faded away, and he let his hand fall to his side as he was finally able to stop concentrating on the illusion. As the area around Roxas became clearly visible again, Marluxia slipped in behind the boy's chair and opened the bottle of strange-looking liquid that he had been holding earlier. When Roxas opened his mouth to scream, he poured the stuff in, making sure that every drop went down before backing away.

For a few seconds, Roxas coughed and flailed around in his chair, straining his wrists against the shackles in a failed attempt to break free. A few seconds passed, and suddenly he seemed to settle down. He was sitting in a different position than before, and there was an oddly calm smile on his face. One which didn't seem to fit Roxas at all.

Zexion was the first to speak.

"What _was _that, Marluxia?"

"Just something I mixed up from a few rare plants," he replied, closing up the bottle and stashing it away in one of his pockets. "It should make it much easier to communicate with... whoever this is."

Roxas, who still had a rather un-Roxas-like expression on his face, turned toward the pink-haired man and spoke. The voice was no longer distorted--and it was now perfectly clear who it belonged to.

"Xion," the new voice said softly. "My name is Xion."

"_Impossible,_" Vexen blurted out, "Xion died almost seven months ago."

"No."

"_'No?' _What do you mean, 'no?' She vanished in a flash of green light, just like any other Fangirl. Xigbar and Roxas both confirmed this."

"No," the voice from within Roxas continued. "That's not how it happened. Though my unstable body was destroyed, I never truly died..."

There was a short pause, and Roxas closed his eyes for a few seconds before continuing.

"I was able to survive... by attaching myself to Roxas' body. Allowing my existence to be absorbed into his."

"I have been living within him over all these months... only surfacing when his consciousness faded and he lost control."

Zexion waved his finger in writing motions over an empty page of his book, taking down every word that the voice of the supposedly-dead girl said. Vexen, at the same time, was recording everything into the computer, typing away surprisingly fast for someone his age.

Marluxia knelt down beside Roxas, until he was standing face-to-face with the boy. And then, he asked one simple question.

"Why?"

"Because... I want to protect him."

Roxas turned away from Marluxia, closing his eyes for just a moment and then breathing in slightly before continuing.

"I can sense the presence of Fangirls from within him. I can feel that their forces are intent on capturing him, even though I don't know why..."

The voice paused, allowing Zexion and Vexen enough time to record everything she had said.

"Something's changed about them," Xion's voice continued. "When I saw Fangirls before, they were mindless monsters... but now, there's some kind of entity behind them, moving them to act intelligently."

"And sometimes, when Roxas is on missions... I can hear her thoughts."


	9. Tourist Trap

**Chapter 8  
**_~ Tourist Trap ~_

Several hours had passed since Xion's voice had spoken through Roxas, and the black-cloaked men who had been crowded into Vexen's lab before had now relocated to the sickbay.

Marluxia continued to watch over the spiky-haired boy as he slept, making sure that the strange mixture of plant extracts had not caused any unexpected side-effects. Vexen and Zexion stood on the other side of the room, comparing their notes and discussing the things they had learned. Lexaeus, who had finished his examination of the damaged walls, was with them as well, just listening as they explained Roxas' bizarre condition to him.

"Although Xion's body was indeed destroyed," Vexen said, pointing to a sketch in Zexion's book, "It seems that her soul was somehow able to attach itself to Roxas' body."

"Now, Xion essentially lives on within Roxas. Normally, she keeps quiet... but when he was brought near death during his last mission, she became so enraged that she took control of his body long enough to destroy the offending Fangirl."

"So," Lexaeus spoke up, "It's a bit like a symbiotic relationship."

"Exactly," the old scientist answered. "Roxas unknowingly provides her with a way to continue living... and in return, Xion protects him when he's unable to defend himself."

Marluxia walked over to the three, handing Lexaeus a clipboard with several charts and descriptions of Roxas' condition over the four days that had passed since his injury.

"Her presence within Roxas also appears to make his wounds heal faster," the pink-haired man added.

"Hmm," Zexion mumbled, glancing over Marluxia's papers. "It seems that this accelerated healing is focused on the most serious injuries."

"Yes, that's right. Minor scrapes on Roxas' arms and legs are still healing at normal rates, but the chest wound from his last mission... it should have taken _weeks_ for him to recover from that."

"Perhaps Xion has recovered some sanity during her seven months within Roxas."

"Indeed," Vexen added. "Answering our questions intelligently, and concentrating whatever healing power she has on the most lethal wounds without wasting any on those that could heal quickly on their own... quite a change from the irrational behavior that Xigbar reported before."

Marluxia shook his head slightly.

"Maybe not," he said, producing the now-empty vial from his pocket. "The serum I mixed up had a calming effect on her... it's difficult to tell how she'd react to us without it."

Vexen nodded in agreement, then went back to looking over the notes with Zexion. For several minutes, the room was silent; then, finally, Lexaeus spoke up about the results of his own investigation.

"I've finished looking over the tunnels created by Kisaki's blast."

The large man reached into his cloak and produced another clipboard, setting it down on the countertop next to Zexion. He dug several dozen small plastic bags out of his pockets as well, leaving them in a small pile near the clipboard.

"What _is_ this?", Vexen asked, holding up a bag of reddish-colored crystals and staring at them as if they were the most bizarre thing he had ever seen. "This couldn't _possibly_ have been inside the wall."

"I'm afraid they were," Lexaeus replied. "I found strange materials like this embedded in every part of the wall touched by the blast."

"But _how?_"

"That's what I haven't been able to figure out. Zexion's report only mentioned a massive blast of energy, but these side-effects don't seem to match up with that type of attack."

"Hmm," Zexion mumbled again, propping his chin up on his hand. "Perhaps we'll learn more about what happened once Kisaki manages to get her powers under control."

"But until that happens," Vexen said, scooping up all of the plastic bags with both hands, "I'll be running some tests on these samples you collected. If they were taken from the edges of the walls that girl blasted open, there should be at least _some_ residual energy left in them..."

* * *

Luxord nearly jumped out of his cloak as the Fangirl alarm suddenly blared from the speaker in the wall behind him. This was followed by a loud _crash!_ as the glass of scotch he was drinking fell to the floor, sending shards of glass, ice cubes, and the alcoholic beverage itself flying everywhere.

"Bloody hell," he muttered to himself, just then noticing that he had been standing right in front of the speaker system. "Always did forget this's where they put in the new speaker..."

He quickly distanced himself from the mess on the floor, but in his rush down the hallway he failed to notice Saix standing in front of him until it was too late. The British gambler bumped into the blue-haired elf, his nose coming to a stop directly onto the center of Saix's X-shaped scar.

"Oh! Excuse me!", he said, jumping back a bit and then quickly regaining his composure. "Didn't see you there, sir. I suppose you're looking for someone to send out on that Fangirl alarm?"

"That's correct," Saix answered. "And it appears that I've just found someone."

Luxord sighed. He had gotten used to the free time that days without any Fangirl alarms had provided, but it seemed that his vacation wasn't going to last past the fourth day after all.

"Well, I suppose I don't have anything else to do at the moment," he said, stroking his beard and glancing back at the spilled drink out of the corner of his eye. "But I do hope you're not going to be sending me into a swarm alone."

"And why not?"

"Well, you see," Luxord began to explain, "I've had a bit to drink already... and you already know that I have a bit of trouble parking that Hippievan even when I _haven't_ been drinking."

Saix twitched slightly, remembering the last time that Luxord had been responsible for driving the Dimensional Hippievan to the scene of a Fangirl swarm. That dent in the rear bumper still had not been repaired.

"Fine," the blue-haired elf said. "You may choose two other members to take with you. Make sure at least one of them is a competent driver."

Once Saix was out of hearing range, the Brit snickered for a second, then began to pace back and forth while muttering to himself, attempting to decide who else to bring along.

"Well... can't be any of the newbies, they're not even allowed to touch the van's controls... Xemnas hasn't gone out on a Fangirl alarm in years, and I doubt Saix would agree to it. Zexion's busy with that project of his... Lexaeus, Vexen and Marluxia too..."

"Xaldin's training that little elf girl... Axel's still working in the kitchen, and Demyx isn't a whole lot better at driving than I am... Roxas doesn't even have his license yet. And I certainly don't want to be alone in that van with Larxene, the little freak..."

He paced back and forth for several seconds before finally getting an idea.

"Well, there's always Xigbar... but I do hope he hasn't been hitting the bottle just yet."

* * *

Unfortunately for the gambler, that was exactly what Xigbar was doing when he finally found him. Apparently, the battle-scarred elf had also started to get a bit lazy during the three days without a single Fangirl alarm; it wasn't even noon yet, but the flask of some unknown alcoholic liquid that he had always carried was nearly halfway empty already.

"Your little brother's just set me up to go out on that Fangirl alarm," Luxord said, causing Xigbar to turn and glance up at him with his one good eye. "Told me to find two others to come with me. Think you're sober enough to drive?"

"Huh," the older man mumbled, taking another swig before answering. "You kidding me? I'm not even half done with this one yet. 'Course I'm sober enough."

He stood up and returned the flask to its place within his cloak, then stretched his arms and cracked his neck.

"Might wanna grab a designated driver for the way back, though... I'll probably finish this stuff off by the time we're done with the Fangirls."

"Hmm," Luxord said, stroking his beard. "Pretty much everyone's busy with something... so it's looking like we'll have to choose between Demyx and Larxene."

Xigbar mumbled something under his breath and took another swig.

"Larxene's the better driver," he said, "But I sure as hell don't want Thunderbitch drivin' us around in that van all day... so I guess we're gonna have to drag Demyx along."

* * *

Finding Demyx was not a difficult task--they only needed to follow the sound of his sitar, which at the moment sounded more like an electric guitar. Though he disliked fighting, Demyx still spent a bit of time practicing his water-elemental powers; he had recently learned how to manipulate the water-strings on his sitar so that it would sound like a completely different instrument when he played it.

As the sounds of heavy metal music faded, Xigbar and Luxord both came around the corner of the doorway and found Demyx sitting on the floor with his instrument in front of him. He had apparently gotten quite good at playing it, as his latest performance had attracted a small crowd of lower-ranking members. They noticed the presence of the two older men long before Demyx himself did, and after congratulating the musician, they quickly and quietly snuck out of the room before they could be recruited for Fangirl-extermination duty.

"Hey, Demyx," Xigbar said, waving at the younger man to get his attention. "Got another Fangirl swarm to take care of. You're comin' with us."

"Awww, man..."

"Cheer up, mate. With all three of us on the job, it shouldn't take too long."

Demyx dematerialized his sitar, causing it to ripple away into a mass of blue bubbles which drifted for a second before vanishing entirely. He then stood up, nodded, and followed after the two older men as they headed for the Dimensional Hippievan's launch tunnel.

"So, uh," the younger man asked as the group headed toward some stairs, "Where're we going again?"

"Not sure," Xigbar mumbled, "Ask Luxord. He's the one Saix picked for the job."

"I don't know any more than you do," the gambler answered. "Typical Saix, sending us off on a mission without even telling us where we're going ahead of time..."

"Guess we're gonna find out when we get there," Xigbar said, taking another swig from his flask. "Van's always programmed to go wherever we need to go, so there shouldn't be anything to worry about."

After walking through some hallways and even more stairs, the trio of black-cloaked men finally reached the tunnel where the Hippievan was kept. As it had not been used in several days, the gateway to the tunnel had a couple of large spiderwebs around the edges; apparently, Zexion had been so busy lately that he had neglected his janitorial duties a bit.

The three approached the van, and Xigbar swung open the driver's side door and quickly hopped in. Luxord joined him in the passenger's seat, and finally Demyx slid open the large side door and sat down in the middle.

"Hey, kid," Xigbar said, turning slightly to face Demyx. "You're drivin' on the way back."

"Huh? Why me?"

"'Cuz I drink too much 'n' Luxord can't park worth a shit."

Demyx blinked for a second at the old elf's cursing, then nodded.

"Yeah, I saw the dent in the van last time," he said. "Axel tried to blame it on me after we got back..."

"Furry-headed bastard," Xigbar laughed. "Remind me not to give 'im a tip the next time I stop by the cafeteria."

* * *

At that very moment, Axel felt an odd itch in his ear and reached up to scratch it. He then quickly returned both of his hands to the platter of food he was carrying, catching it just in time to prevent its contents from crashing to the floor before it could be delivered to his customers.

Yes, Axel worked in the Organization's cafeteria. He was actually quite a good cook, and due to his bladed weapons and fire-elemental powers, it was possible for him to prepare all kinds of meals without any need for knives or a stove. Having Axel in charge of cooking certainly cut down on costs, allowing him to spend extra money on higher-quality food instead of just shoveling out cheap crap like a school cafeteria would. Though he was lazy at times and had quite an attitude, Axel was still a big help to the Organization.

"Are you going to stand there staring at the food all day, or are you actually going to let us eat it?"

The source of the voice, a heavily-muscled man with silvery hair that spiked up and stuck out to both sides, was sitting with his arms crossed. Across the table, a somewhat feminine-looking elf with dark blue hair glared up at Axel, tapping one finger on the table impatiently. Joining the two was Zagan, with the same shiny glasses and untraceable expression as always.

"Irael does have a point," the elf said, "We've all become quite hungry waiting on you."

"And here I thought _he_ was supposed to be the waiter."

"Sure, sure, go ahead and eat," Axel said, snickering slightly at Zagan's joke. "Didn't know you guys were in such a rush."

The spiky-haired man sat the tray down, shoving some salt and pepper shakers out of the way so that it could fit directly in the center of the table. After a quick glance around the table at the three men, he spun around and headed back toward the kitchen once again.

Irael, the muscular man with the silvery hair and the grumpy expression, uncrossed his arms just long enough to eat a single French fry, then returned to his previous position.

"Hmph. Now that the cat-man is gone, you can finally tell us what's going on, Zagan."

"Yes," the blue-haired elf added, "I'm quite interested in hearing why three days passed without any Fangirl alarms... how did you find out?"

"Well," the man with the shiny glasses began, "I didn't know about it at first... I guess one of those other guys with access to the Fangirl Detection System must've done it. But I know what the records said."

"And?"

"Well... it turns out that there _were_ a couple of Fangirl swarms during that three-day break we just had."

"Then why didn't someone set off a Fangirl alarm?"

"I dunno," Zagan continued, "I wasn't in the room at the time. But whoever _was_ in there didn't set off the alarm, even though there were some pretty serious Fangirl infestations going on."

"And," he said, lowering his voice slightly so he was sure that only the other two men at the table could hear him, "I'm guessing that whoever did it is the same guy who deleted files from the computer before."

"So you're saying we have a traitor within the Organization?"

"Maybe. Or maybe that's just what the higher-ups want us to think."

The silver-haired man slammed his fists down on the table, nearly causing a nearby can of soda to topple over.

"A conspiracy within the Organization? Ridiculous!"

"Well, it could be something like that," Zagan continued, "Or maybe the higher-ranking guys just don't care anymore. I noticed one thing in common between all the recent Fangirl swarms that didn't get reported."

"They were all from third-world countries. And I don't mean the kind of places you hear about on the news. I mean way out there in the middle of nowhere... where _nobody_ would notice if something happened."

* * *

The Dimensional Hippievan came flying out of the void, rumbling onto a grassy field below as the surrounding landscape became visible. Xigbar almost laughed at the sight of it; they had landed in what appeared to be an empty field, with no paved roads or parking lots in sight--parking the van here wouldn't have been a problem, even for Luxord.

"Well, we're here," Xigbar said, letting his door swing open for a second before turning off the Hippievan and hopping out. "Anybody have a clue where 'here' is?"

"This place... this is...", Luxord said, staring off away from the van. "I'm home!"

"_Home,_ huh? Guess that means we're somewhere in England. Any idea where those Fangirls are gonna show up?"

There was a brief moment of silence, and then an equally-brief moment of loud noise as Demyx jumped out of the van and slammed the side door shut behind him. He then turned and stared off in the same direction as Luxord, and almost immediately pointed and spoke.

"Uh, I dunno... but if I had to guess, probably over there."

"Over there," of course, referred to an ancient-looking castle on a nearby hill. Although no Fangirls were visible, there were plenty of frightened tourists, running and screaming from the old stone building.

"A lucky guess," Luxord said, summoning a handful of his cards and taking off running in the direction of the castle. He was soon followed by Xigbar, who teleported several yards at a time instead of running and quickly caught up with the gambler. Finally, Demyx noticed that both of his companions had left without him and took off running as fast as he could.

"Hey, guys! Wait up!"

"Don't worry about it," Xigbar yelled back at him during a pause between two teleports, "You're a fast runner. You'll catch up."

Demyx ran for several seconds, then propelled himself forward with a jet of water; he did indeed catch up, passing Luxord and zipping up the hill so quickly that he came close to Xigbar. In under a minute, the three black-cloaked men had all reached the top of the hill, where dozens of tourists had been thrown into a panic by something inside the castle.

Xigbar looked around with his one yellow eye, spotting several odd things among the crowd of flailing tourists. He then turned to Demyx and Luxord and gave them his impression of the scene.

"Yep... there's Fangirls, all right," the old elf muttered. "There's a couple of guys makin' out on the ground over there, right in the middle of all this chaos. No way _that's_ gonna happen without Fangirls around."

"Aww man, Yaoinators again?", Demyx groaned. "I hate that kind... why can't we ever run into a swarm of nothing but Nooblets and Glompers?"

Luxord shuffled his cards for a second, then half-jokingly answered the younger man's question.

"Well, I suppose the Fangirls don't think that making us die of laughter would be quite enough."

The three waded through the crowd of shrieking tourists, with Xigbar occasionally shoving the particularly annoying ones aside and Demyx stutteringly apologizing to them as they passed him. Before long, they had reached the castle's front door; with the tourists out of the way, Xigbar and Demyx finally summoned their weapons, and then all three charged in after the Fangirls that surely waited somewhere inside.

A dozen Glompers leaped at the three from all directions, but in an instant they were annihilated by a flurry of cards, water jets, and arrowhead-shaped bullets. Two Flamer Fangirls launched fireballs in the direction of the Organization members, but these were doused in midair by orbs of concentrated water; when the Fangirls emerged from their hiding places to attempt a more direct attack, Xigbar only needed to wave his hand to make them slam face-first in the ground and shatter, unable to even support their own weight under the effects of heightened gravity.

For several minutes, the three cleared a path through the virtual army of lesser Fangirls that had flooded the entire castle. Finally, they reached the hallway leading up to the old throne room--which had recently been redecorated with some rather Fangirlish new "furniture." Whether standing up or lying on the floor, every few feet of the room contained a pair of male teenagers making out, while their horrified girlfriends, mothers, and sisters stared on from a short distance away. Even a complete fool would be able to tell that Yaoinator Fangirls were at work here.

"Yep," Demyx said, averting his eyes after a brief glance at the nearest pair of young men. "Definitely Yaoinators... again."

"And there they are now," Luxord said, pointing one hand toward the throne at the other end of the room and readying a card in the other.

Standing in front of the throne were three Yaoinator Fangirls, each one carrying a different flag and waving it around occasionally. Behind them, sitting on the throne, was a fourth Fangirl, though the Organization members were unable to make out any details of this one through the wall of Yaoinators.

For just a second, the three Yaoinators stopped waving their flags, allowing the numbers emblazoned on them to become visible. Xigbar spotted them--or, rather, the presence of his number in two of the three flags--and cursed under his breath.

"Goddammit... it's like they _knew_ I was coming."

"Hey, you can teleport, remember? Just dodge 'em whenever they try to zap you!"

"Easier said than done, kid... ya shouldn't underestimate these things."

With that, all three of the Yaoinators held their flags out in front of their bodies and began to spin them around rapidly. Circles of purple energy projected outward from the creatures' weapons, heading straight toward all three of the black-cloaked men at incredible speeds.

Just when it seemed that all three would be struck by the Fangirls' attacks, the air rippled slightly around them and the waves of energy slowed to a crawl. Luxord grinned at Xigbar and Demyx, who nodded in response and jumped over the sluggish purple rings. A second more passed before Luxord himself calmly stepped aside, allowing the blasts to rush past him as his time-slowing power lost its hold.

Xigbar and Demyx were immediately on the offensive, pelting the Fangirls with bullets and spheres of water. Though the creatures were struck by some of the attacks, most were deflected by their flags, which were still rapidly spinning. Demyx jumped away from them for a second before propelling himself forward on a surge of water, clobbering the Fangirl in the middle with the heavier end of his sitar as he went. The Fangirl on the throne wrapped itself up in what appeared to be a black cape, then disappeared in a puff of smoke, reappearing on the other end of the room. Luxord spun around to face it and flung a card in its direction, but it vanished once again, this time returning to the same position once the sharpened card was out of the way.

"Watch out," Luxord said, flinging a handful of cards in the new Fangirl's direction, "It's not just Yaoinators we're dealing with here."

"Huh? What was that?", Xigbar mumbled, turning his head to see what the other man was talking about. In that moment, one of the Yaoinators took its chance to attack, springing forward while spinning its flag. A purple aura of energy flew outward and surrounded Xigbar, causing his one visible eye to flash red for a split-second before returning to its usual yellowish color.

"Bloody hell," Luxord said, glancing back at Xigbar before returning his attention to the Fangirl. "We've just had our best fighter turned against us."

Demyx looked up for a second to see Xigbar staring oddly at him, but before he could ask anyone what was going on, he was struck in the side of the head by the Fangirl's flagpole and sent flying several feet backward. After sliding across the floor on his back for a second, he hopped back to his feet and fired a powerful jet of water into the Fangirl, smashing it through the throne and into the next room.

It was then that something odd happened. The two Yaoinators left in the room both watched as the one-eyed elf walked toward Demyx like some kind of zombie, with a strange and rather un-Xigbar-like smile plastered on his face. One of them glanced at the other, which giggled slightly and pointed at the first Fangirl. This Fangirl's text-symbol face warped into an angry expression, and the two seemed to ignore their opponents in favor of babbling at each other.

"Demyx? Come on, Xiggy totally likes Luxord!"

"No he doesn't, Luxord's waaaay too old for him!"

"Well, Demyx is too _young_ for him! He's still a teenager, after all!"

"Wait, what? No I'm not! I turned _21_ a few months ago!"

Ignoring Demyx's correction, the Fangirls continued to argue back and forth about which of the two younger men they preferred to pair up with Xigbar, each firing another blast of purple, mind-altering energy at the elf between sentences. In typical Fangirl style, they never once considered to ask Xigbar his opinion on the issue; of course, as they were Yaoinator Fangirls, this would most likely result in an answer they didn't want to hear. For example, "I'd rather have a hooker any day. And I mean a _female_ one, you dumbass Fangirls!"

While this dispute between Fangirls raged (and Demyx watched with a very confused look on his face), Luxord's battle against the other Fangirl continued. He flung three cards at the creature, then smirked slightly when it pulled in its cape and vanished; readying another card, he waited for it to reappear in the room again. His timing was perfect--as soon as the Fangirl's body began to appear, he enlarged the card to twice its normal size and sent it flying.

The card effortlessly sliced through the Fangirl's cape, cutting into its skin slightly before the creature realized what was happening. It shrieked and jumped up and backward away from the card, clinging to the wall with its clawed hands. Luxord shook his head and pointed his hand upward, and the card abruptly changed direction in mid-flight, following the Fangirl up the wall.

The Fangirl wrapped its cape around its body again and attempted to disappear before the card reached it, but nothing happened--apparently, with the cape damaged, this trick would no longer work. The card sliced its cape once again, leaving it hanging in tatters as it continued onward into the Fangirl's body, shoving it backward and pinning it to the wall.

Before Luxord could finish the creature off, he was interrupted by a pair of skinny, black-sleeved arms wrapping around his chest. He struggled against their grip, but whoever had latched onto him was just a bit too strong for the gambler to fight off.

Hearing Luxord's cries for help, Demyx immediately stopped paying attention to the argument between the two Fangirls and turned to see what was happening on the other side of he room.

"Oh crap!"

Thinking as quickly as he could, Demyx raised one hand high into the air and strummed the water-strings of his sitar with the other. A strange note filled the air, and a large sphere of water formed above his hand, growing larger and larger until he finally threw it directly at Xigbar. Rather than slamming into him with a great deal of force or exploding into a huge flood of water, however, it simply splashed over the old elf's head and back, soaking Luxord in the process.

Xigbar twitched, snapped out of the Fangirl's trance by the cold water; he shivered for a second, and then noticed that he was hugging Luxord so tightly that the gambler's arms were pinned down. He immediately let go, turning toward the Fangirls and quietly muttering all sorts of things that he wouldn't be allowed to say on television. He then summoned his gun-arrows once again and placed one in front of the other.

"Okay... now you've _really_ pissed me off."

A flare of purplish energy erupted from Xigbar's weapons as he connected one gun to the end of the other. The weapons melded together and changed shape slightly, transforming from two hand-held guns to something reminiscent of a high-powered sniper rifle. He raised the heavy weapon and took aim, rapidly firing at the Fangirl on the left of the throne; it attempted to deflect them, but this only resulted in its flag being ripped to shreds by the constant barrage of bullets. Shortly afterward, the Fangirl itself followed, filling the throne room with a green glow for just a moment before shattering into a cloud of zeroes and ones.

Demyx prepared to finish off the other Yaoinator, but Xigbar didn't give him a chance--before he had even charged a single orb of water, the Fangirl was already pinned to the wall by half a dozen arrowhead-shaped bullets. As it too shattered and disappeared, the last of the three Fangirls finally came crawling back out of the other room. Its flag was broken in half, though it was still holding the cloth portion, on which "1 x 7" was printed. Demyx didn't take any time to read this, however, launching his fully-charged water orb directly into the creature's chest and sending it flying back into the room it had just left. A flash of green from that direction a moment later confirmed its death; now there was only one Fangirl left.

Turning around, Xigbar took a good look at the caped Fangirl at the other side of the room. Somehow, it had managed to survive nearly being sliced in half by one of Luxord's cards; on closer inspection, it still had a large cut across its stomach, though it seemed to be quickly regenerating from its injury.

"Ah... should've known the second I saw that cape. It's a Vampire Fangirl."

Xigbar raised his gun and aimed it directly at the creature's chest.

"Well, only one way to deal with vampires... stake 'em."

A single shot rang out, and within a fraction of a second Xigbar's bullet had pierced clean through the Fangirl's chest. The creature screamed, and rather than blood, its wound erupted with sparks of green light. This light expanded until the green glow covered the Fangirl's entire body, and then just like all other Fangirls, it shattered into computer code before finally disappearing.

With the deaths of the four Fangirls, the tourists who had previously fallen under their spell returned to normal. Dozens of young men suddenly pulled away from each other and gagged; others, who were brainwashed into thinking they were vampires and attempting to bite other tourists on the neck, stopped in mid-bite and wondered what they had been doing before. Among all this chaos (which was only slightly less chaotic than the initial panic caused by the Fangirls), nobody noticed the three black-cloaked men walking away.

Minutes later, back outside the castle, Luxord, Xigbar, and Demyx headed down the hill toward the place where the Dimensional Hippievan was parked. As they stepped up to its doors, Xigbar reached into one of his pockets and fished out the keys, tossing them to Demyx and then taking a large swig from his flask before speaking.

"Your turn to drive, kid."

"Me? Do I have to?"

"You'd better. I've been drinking, remember?"

"And I've been... well, pretty much molested by one of my best friends, thanks to those bloody Fangirls," Luxord added. "I'd say you're the only one here in any condition to be driving right now."

"Well, okay... but don't blame me if anything happens!"

With that, Demyx hopped into the driver's seat and stuck the key into the ignition, barely giving Xigbar and Luxord time to get into the van before he went speeding off across the field.


	10. Inconsistency

**CHAPTER 9**  
_~ Inconsistency ~_

A day had passed since Kisaki's failed attempt at Zero Gear training had blown a massive hole through the training room's wall.

For the second time, Zexion walked into the training room only to find the strange girl already waiting for him. On the other side of the room, the hole from their last training session was partially covered up by a new set of bleachers but still there; most likely because Vexen wanted more time to study it before it was patched up.

"Today," the short man said, walking across the room until he was just a few feet away from her, "We're going to try the Zero Gear again."

She stared at the black suitcase in Zexion's hands with a look of interest, apparently having already forgotten just how badly it went the last time. After a short pause, he opened the container and retrieved the small, silvery object, holding it carefully so that Kisaki couldn't quite reach it.

"Now... _this _time, remember to not let any of your energy slip out around the edges. I'm sure Lexaeus doesn't want to have to fix _two_ holes in the wall."

"Huh?"

Zexion sighed. Did she really not remember?

"See the hole in the wall, behind the bleachers? When you overloaded your Zero Gear the last time, that's what happened."

She glanced over at the hole, which went almost all the way up to the ceiling before it finally stopped. After a few seconds of staring, she turned her attention back to Zexion once again.

"Oh. I did that?"

"Yes... you did. Of course, you _were_knocked unconscious by the recoil," Zexion answered. He flipped through his book for a few seconds before continuing.

"Marluxia said you were drained of most of your energy, but otherwise unharmed. However, we both suspected that you might not remember exactly what happened..."

Kisaki scratched her head slightly, then spoke once again.

"Well, I do _kinda_ remember it... I just didn't know it made such a big hole."

"Just make sure it doesn't happen again. It's time to start today's training session."

* * *

Outside of the training room's door, a small crowd of non-numbered members had gathered. The story of what had happened during the last training session had already circulated throughout the base, and Kisaki had become somewhat of an overnight celebrity among the other new recruits--she was the only member in the Organization's history who managed to defeat her superior officer in hand-to-hand combat on her first day.

Part of this fascination was simply due to that, of course, but most members of the black-cloaked crowd were more interested in what she _hadn't_ done yet--namely, activate her powers or summon her weapon. With nothing known of her powers other than the fact that they were far greater than anyone expected, the younger members were letting their imaginations run wild with speculation.

"I bet it's gonna be something really weird," Banbu said, peeking in around the edge of the door and whispering back to a group of others. "Like antimatter, or something like that."

"Nah, it can't be," Tundo said, crouching down slightly to peek through the door alongside the boy. "Irael's got that one already."

"Oh yeah..."

"Well," Vi spoke up from a few feet away from the door, "Kisaki _could _have the same power as someone else. That one girl, Xion... she had the same powers as Roxas, remember? Anything could happen..."

"Maybe she doesn't really have a power?", Michiko added. "I mean, Roberto and Naminé don't have weapons... so why not?"

A small, black-haired girl wearing glasses, standing against the other wall of the hallway near Vi, looked up and slowly raised her hand, pointing into the training room. Everyone immediately stopped talking and turned their heads to see what was going to happen.

"She's... she's putting on the Zero Gear now."

"Hope she doesn't blow anything up this time," Banbu mumbled. He reached up one hand and held on to his hat just in case.

"So, you guys... whaddya think her weapon's gonna be?"

"Good question," Vi answered. "I really have no idea."

"Probably something you can use in close-range combat," Otonashi said. The silver-haired man, who had remained silent up to this point, was standing behind Banbu, Tundo, and Michiko, occasionally glancing into the training room through the window rather than peeking into the door.

"Huh," Tundo answered. "Y'mean like, brass knuckles or somethin'? I don't think any of us have that kinda thing yet, unless I'm forgettin' somebody."

"Maybe she'll have one of those really weird weapons," Banbu said, "You know, like Zexion's. How does that guy use a _book_ as a weapon, anyway?"

Michiko opened her mouth to speak again, but before she had a chance she was interrupted by a strange electrical buzzing sound that slowly filled the air. Kisaki had begun to charge the Zero Gear with her pale-green energy, and once again strange things were happening.

The buzzing seemed a bit less harsh this time, as if it was being held back. Even so, it grew louder and louder as the Zero Gear became more and more infused with the girl's power; a greenish aura had begun to flare up all around Kisaki's body, and soon, something about the air seemed to change, though nobody could quite put a finger on exactly what it was. Directly exposed to the sheer power radiating from the Zero Gear now, the younger members found themselves frozen by fear and barely able to speak.

Though others tried, the glasses-wearing girl was the first to stutter out a few words.

"Th-that power... It's..."

"So strong... _too _strong. It's... almost like Xemnas..."

* * *

"Good," Zexion said, "Now, it's time for the hard part."

Kisaki stood, one arm outstretched, with the Zero Gear hovering around her wrist. A massive flare of translucent greenish energy had erupted around her entire body, emitting such a huge amount of energy that Zexion had to shield his eyes with his entire arm just to avoid flinching away. Most amazing of all, she _still_ didn't seem to be putting much of an effort into it.

"Look deep into your mind. Think of weapons--not any specific weapon, just the concept of a weapon in general. Think of a situation where you were forced to defend yourself."

Kisaki nodded and closed her eyes, appearing to concentrate on something. The flare of energy around her seemed to condense slightly, moving toward her arm rather than surrounding her entire body.

"Now... let your hand move into whichever position first comes to mind, and then focus your energy into your palm--"

There was a sudden flash of light from Kisaki's hand, accompanied by a shockwave that sent Zexion tumbling backward. Once again, he found himself lying on his back on the training room floor; that seemed to be a recurring theme of these training sessions.

When the light cleared, Kisaki was holding a long, ornately-decorated spear. Its tip was actually separated into two parts, one within the other--a large V-shaped piece of metal on the outside, and one shaped like the cross-points of the Organization's symbol on the inside. A small crystal was embedded in the shaft just a few inches below the point, and the rest of the shaft was covered in strange patterns.

The strange feeling in the air was now gone, along with the buzzing noise that accompanied it. Zexion, standing up and dusting himself off, finished the sentence that he started before Kisaki's summoning interrupted him.

"In... one quick burst."

"Like that?"

"Yes, Kisaki... like that. Though I would appreciate it if you don't knock me to the floor _every_ time you summon your weapon..."

Outside of the training room, most of the non-numbered members had also been struck by the shockwave, though they hadn't been hit quite as hard as Zexion. Tundo had lost his balance and fallen down, while Michiko, Banbu, and Otonashi were clinging to the doorframe to support themselves. The other two girls, standing furthest away from the door, were safely outside of the shockwave's range; their cloaks flapped in the wind for a second, but other than that they were unaffected.

"Damn," Tundo muttered, picking himself up off the ground slowly. "All that power just from summoning her weapon?"

"Seems like she doesn't have much control over it," Otonashi added, "But at the same time... she doesn't seem to be really trying, either..."

"That sounds kinda like how my powers were at first," Michiko said, finally loosening her grip on the door. "I always used to give myself too much of a boost by accident... and then I'd be bouncing off the walls with extra energy for hours."

"Look," the bespectacled girl said, "The light's clearing... I can see what her weapon is now."

"A spear? Huh. Wasn't expectin' that one."

"She's got a spear?", Banbu asked, peeking around the doorframe into the training room. "But isn't that Xaldin's weapon already?"

"Not exactly," Otonashi corrected. "Xaldin's weapons are longer, with sharp-edged blades for slashing. This seems to be more of a stabbing weapon."

Rather than saying anything else, the black-cloaked crowd simply stared through the open door and watched. Zexion had summoned his book, and apparently he and Kisaki were about to begin the next phase of the training. She held her weapon awkwardly in one hand, looking at it as if she had no idea how to actually use it. And then, before she even had a chance to try it out, Zexion was on the attack.

A single page appeared to tear itself free from Zexion's book, drifting through the air as if blown by the wind. In mid-flight, its shape twisted into a cartoonish image of a snake, with two giant fangs bared as it rose up into the air before diving rapidly downward. Kisaki hopped back, but the paper snake changed direction in midair before hitting the floor and pounced toward her. She swung her spear wildly in front of her, missing several times before finally striking the illusionary monster and causing it to vanish instantly.

Several more of these paper snakes flew out from the pages of the Lexicon, spiraling through the air at different speeds and angles. One was quickly destroyed by a lucky thrust that clipped its tail just as it was about to strike; a second slipped past Kisaki's defenses and latched onto her arm. She screamed and started jumping around, flailing her arms and swiping away with her weapon in an attempt to dislodge it; in the process, she managed to swat the third and final snake out of the air, destroying it without even noticing.

Zexion closed his eyes and sighed. Kisaki's behavior now just didn't seem to match up with the fighting ability she showed earlier. It was normal for new members to have some trouble with their powers at first... but could she really be _this_ incompetent with her new weapon?

When the blue-haired man opened his eyes, he was greeted by a rather unexpected sight--Kisaki, no longer struggling with the paper snake illusion, was charging straight at him. He slid backward across the floor, expecting a direct attack, but instead Kisaki jumped, clearing the distance between them too quickly for him to react. She thrust her spear forward as she came down, pinning Zexion's book to the floor and only narrowly missing the man himself.

"I got your book."

"Yes, Kisaki... I can see that."

He waved his hands slightly, causing a blue-black mist to shoot upward out of the book and encircle Kisaki's weapon. She began to pull it away, but the illusion had already taken effect--instead of mist, she saw a mass of purple tentacles growing upward out of the book's pages and taking hold of her spear. She yanked backward, but more and more tentacles kept coming, wrapping even more tightly around the spear's shaft and pulling it away from her.

When she jumped up to reach for her weapon again, the tentacles reared back and then slammed down on her, sending her crashing to the floor.

"You just learned something," Zexion said, picking up his book and causing the cluster of tentacles to vanish with another wave of his hand. The spear fell to the floor, its point becoming embedded into the polished wood. "An opponent is not harmless simply because he is disarmed."

* * *

"It's so strange. Kisaki should have been able to beat Zexion without any trouble..."

The small girl leaning up against the wall flipped through a small notebook, then adjusted her glasses slightly and looked back over to the others.

"Summoning her weapon alone was enough to knock him down... all of us have been training for months, and then a new recruit comes along with _that much_ power on her first days of training. It's just scary."

Tundo waddled across the hallway and gave her an odd look, glancing back into the training room to make sure he didn't miss anything before speaking.

"Scary, huh... how strong d'ya think this girl is, anyway?"

"I can't tell for sure. But if her aura is able to affect me the way it did, she has to be at least as powerful as Saix... and that surge when she first summoned her weapon was even stronger."

"What I'm wondering," Otonashi added, "Is why she seemed like she couldn't get the hang of using her weapon. Everyone with a weapon gets one that's familiar to them, right?"

Banbu shrugged, then summoned his yo-yo, flipping it up and down a few times along the string of golden light that connected it to his fingers.

"I guess so," he said, "I mean, I never really used any weapons before I got this thing, but I always was pretty good with a yo-yo."

"It's the same with me," Vi added. She summoned her paintbrush, causing a swirl of darkness to encircle her hand for a few seconds before it fully materialized. "My weapon still took the form of something I knew how to use, even if it wasn't exactly what most people would call a weapon."

Otonashi nodded, summoning his weapon as well. It resembled a whip, but with a sharp metal hook attached to the end; almost like a fishing pole, but with a much shorter pole and a much more solid line. He then dematerialized it, and the others quickly followed suit--they really had no good reason to be carrying around their weapons in the middle of a crowded hallway, after all.

"It's the same way with everyone I've asked," he said, glancing back into the room to see that the new recruit's training session had resumed. "Kisaki should have at least _some_ familiarity with that kind of weapon."

Inside the training room, Kisaki once again flailed her spear around wildly, just barely deflecting another handful of Zexion's illusionary attacks split-seconds before they made contact. It seemed that she was managing to avoid being hit on dumb luck alone.

"But instead... she's just waving it around like a child playing with a stick."

"So powerful," the girl in the glasses mumbled to herself, scribbling something in her notebook as she watched the training room. "But at the same time, she's even more inconsistent than Axel on a bad day..."

She flipped the notebook shut and leaned back against the wall, focusing her full attention on Kisaki and Zexion.

"I wonder what it all means..."

* * *

Elsewhere within the Organization's base, Roxas sat cross-legged atop a small cushion. On the other side of the room was Marluxia, sitting in a similar position and occasionally glancing over at the boy. At the room's door stood Xaldin, with his arms crossed, nearly blocking off the entire doorway with his sheer size.

"Roxas," Marluxia said, getting the boy's attention, "Earlier today, when you were strapped down in Vexen's lab... we discovered something very important."

The boy looked a bit confused; the pink-haired man paused for a second, waiting to see if he had any questions, and then continued to speak.

"Xion, who we all thought died seven months ago... is not truly dead. She has been living within you all this time."

"During your last mission, when you were badly wounded and saw her eyes for just a moment before blacking out... it was because she took control of your body in order to destroy that Fangirl and save your life."

Roxas' mouth was now hanging open slightly, though he said nothing. He knew that Marluxia wouldn't just make up something so serious, but he was having trouble believing it all the same--just when he had finally accepted that Xion was gone, he finds out that she really wasn't? It just didn't seem real, somehow.

"This may be hard for you to believe," Marluxia continued, "But soon you'll be able to see for yourself. I'm not completely sure if it will work just yet, but... Xaldin and I may have figured out a way for you to communicate with Xion."

Xaldin took several steps away from the door, sitting down on the floor next to Marluxia. He looked over at Roxas and grinned slightly before returning to a more serious expression.

"First," the hairy elf said, "You gotta calm down. When you're hurt or pissed off, she goes nuts... so if you wanna have much of a conversation with the girl, you can't have too many uncontrolled emotions bouncin' around."

Marluxia nodded, closing his eyes and holding out his hands in a meditative position.

"Don't think about anything," he said, "Not even Xion. Just breathe slowly and stay completely calm."

Roxas attempted to do this, closing his eyes and adjusting his arms into an imitation of the older man's pose. Several minutes passed before he sighed slightly and opened his eyes again.

"I don't think it's working..."

"You've gotta give it some time, kid," Xaldin said. "You're never gonna get anywhere with this if you can't be patient."

Marluxia's eyes slipped open, and he glanced at Xaldin for a second before turning his attentions back toward Roxas.

"Try it again. Close your eyes, clear your thoughts, and just breathe..."

* * *

Zexion sat in a large chair in a small, dusty room near the training area, taking a moment to rest while Kisaki was off getting lunch during her break. He was flipping through an old book, occasionally sipping a little bit of some kind of bubbly, dark-colored beverage in between pages.

The blue-haired man heard the door to the office creak open slowly, but he ignored it, focusing on his reading instead. He was on break too, after all--if someone wanted to interrupt him, they would have to do more than just open a door.

Suddenly, he felt a pair of elbows rest on the back of his chair. He tilted his head back to see who was there, but instead of a face, he saw that almost his entire field of vision was blocked out by Kisaki's breasts.

"Gah!", he yelled out, jumping forward out of the chair and slamming his book shut. "What are you doing back already!? I thought you said you were going to go eat some lunch..."

"I did!"

"You ate lunch _already?_", Zexion said, "But it's only been ten minutes since you left. That's hardly even enough time to finish cooking a decent meal."

"Well, Axel had a whole table full of food ready when I got there," she said, "And the guys who ordered it never showed up, so I didn't have to wait around for him to cook anything."

"Yes, but... you still had to take some time to _eat_ it."

"I eat fast!"

Zexion sighed.

"Let me get this straight," he said, sitting back down in his chair, "You ate enough food to fill up _several_ people... in less than ten minutes."

Kisaki nodded.

"Yep."

"Do you _always_ eat like that?"

"Pretty much, yeah."

Another set of footsteps, these much slower and heavier than Kisaki's, entered the room. Shortly afterward, they were followed by a loud, obnoxious voice.

"The way that girl eats, it's a wonder she's not as big as me by now!"

Zexion turned toward the door and immediately spotted Tundo, whose giant afro haircut and even-larger body almost completely blocked the view into the training room. Standing a few feet behind him were several more non-numbered members, who had apparently been watching Kisaki's training session earlier.

"So," he asked the group, "Are all of you just getting back from your lunch breaks as well?"

"Yeah," Tundo said, "None of us ate much of anything, though. Didn't wanna miss the second half of the training session, after all."

"There isn't going to be a second half today."

"Huh?", Kisaki asked, leaning over so that she was almost face-to-face with Zexion. "Why not?"

"Your power is already far beyond what is expected of a new recruit on her second day of training," he answered, "And on top of that, you've already summoned your weapon... almost nobody manages that with only two days of training."

He took a breath, expecting someone to interrupt him, but when nobody else spoke up he went ahead and continued what he was saying.

"The one area in which you are _severely_ lacking is weapon technique... and, as you may have figured out, I'm not exactly the right man for that job."

The small girl with dark hair and glasses, who had previously been listening from outside in the training room, stepped forward.

"What do you mean?", she asked, "From everything I've seen, you're highly skilled at using your weapon. Someone like Tundo here would never be able to pull off the kinds of things you do with that book."

Zexion stood up from his chair and sighed.

"It's clear you still have much to learn," he said, taking a few steps toward the crowd of new members. "Almost everything my Lexicon appears to do is actually the work of my illusion powers."

"When it comes to weapons and physical combat, I'm one of the weakest in the entire Organization. But one of the most important skills that one of us can have is the ability to use our weapon and powers together..."

He summoned his book, holding it in one hand and commanding its pages to flip open with the other. Bluish-black energy began to surround the tome, then stretched upward from the page and formed into the shape of a hand.

"You see," he began to explain, "With my powers alone, I can only create images and manipulate my opponents' minds... I can cause the illusion of pain, and perhaps even push someone into unconsciousness if I'm lucky, but there's simply no way to cause any actual damage. Observe."

He waved his hand, and the illusionary hand balled itself up into a fist. It stretched upward out of the book and flew across the room, clobbering Tundo square in the face before returning to its previous position.

"Dammit!", the fat man cursed, "That hurt!"

"Or so you think. In fact, even the pain was nothing more than an illusion--one with a strong enough will would have been able to easily shrug off that kind of attack without so much as flinching. If you could look in a mirror right now, you would see that there's not a single mark on your face--not even the bit of redness and swelling you would expect from a punch like that."

Zexion waved his hand again, and the energy surrounding his book faded, taking the image of the floating hand with it. He then shut the book and dematerialized it before continuing his explanation.

"But with my weapon and powers acting together," he said, "It becomes possible to create illusions that have some substance to them. By drawing on the solidified energy that composes my Lexicon, my illusions can become solid as well for just an instant before impact."

"For example, those paper snakes you saw me use during Kisaki's training session. When struck in midair, they dissipated harmlessly... but if she missed one and it was able to reach her body, it would latch on and bite. Those bites caused real damage, thanks to the combination of my weapon and powers working together."

He sat back down, picking up the old book he had been reading before and taking another drink from his cup. Tundo shrugged and glanced back at the crowd of others who had followed him, then proceeded to leave the room.

Several minutes passed, and Zexion noticed that one presence was still in the room along with him. He didn't even have to look up to figure out who it was.

"You can leave now, Kisaki... training's over for today."

"Oh... okay," she said, turning and beginning to walk toward the door. Before she reached it, she stopped and spun back around to face Zexion again, apparently just remembering something she wanted to ask.

"What about tomorrow? Am I going to learn how to use my powers and weapon together like you can?"

There was a short pause as Zexion slipped a bookmark in between the pages of the book he was reading, and then he answered.

"Tomorrow, I'll be asking one of the more experienced fighters for a bit of help. You'll need to learn how to use your weapon with at least some degree of skill before you have any hope of intertwining your weapon and powers."

"And of course... you'll need to learn how to use your powers as well. At the moment, you don't even know what your power _is,_ let alone how to use it."

"Yeah..."

She glanced down at the floor for a second, then turned and walked out, once again leaving Zexion in peace.


	11. Another Side

**CHAPTER 10**  
_~ Another Side ~_

The morning sun shone through tall stained-glass windows, casting strange patterns of light across the floor. The building looked like a church, but all of its pews were completely empty; a layer of dust had settled on the floor, as if this place had been long abandoned.

But, if you looked closer, it could be seen that the old church was still being used for something, even if it wasn't its original purpose. Between the pews, there were heavy bootprints in the dust--as empty as the building seemed to be at first glance, someone had indeed been inside not long ago.

The heavy wooden door at the front of the church swung open, illuminating the entire building with a flood of sunlight from the outside. Two men, each almost completely covered by armor, stepped into the room and quickly slammed the door shut before marching across the floor, heading toward the pulpit.

When they arrived there, each of them removed a cylindrical object, roughly the size of a sword's handle, from their belts and held them up against the podium for a few seconds. A pair of computerized _beep_ noises echoed throughout the room, followed by the sound of something shifting beneath the room's stone floor. The podium tilted back, revealing a hidden stairway underneath it.

The two soldiers quickly marched down the staircase, and the podium shifted back into place behind them once they were safely out of the way. They continued even further down, turning down several hallways and marching until they reached a wooden door with a bit of slightly-tarnished gold trim around the edges.

Once again, they detached the metal cylinders from their belts, holding them up against the door. After another series of beeps filled the air, the massive door slowly swung open.

Upon entering the room, both of the armored men took several steps forward and then dropped to their knees, bowing their heads in the presence of an old man shrouded in red robes who sat at the other end of the room.

"Master Ansem," they said in unison.

"We've finished our investigation into the appearance of the next Fangirl swarm," one of the two added.

On the far end of the room, the old man slowly stood up from the chair he was sitting in. He took several steps toward the soldiers.

"Good," he said, "And what did you find?"

"Phone lines and wireless signals within twenty miles of this point have been increasingly flooded with Fangirl activity in the past twenty-four hours."

The second soldier raised his head slightly and added an observation of his own.

"It's very similar the buildup of activity before the previous swarm."

The old man nodded, then began pacing back and forth in the room, his arms held behind his back.

"And what of the amount of activity? How did that compare to what we saw prior to past Fangirl attacks?"

One of the men shivered slightly, then answered.

"I'm afraid there has been far more activity this time, sir. If I may make a prediction... it's looking like this is going to be the biggest one yet."

"Even larger than three days ago... a Fangirl swarm of that magnitude simply cannot be allowed to rage on unchecked. We will need to send our very best to deal with this."

Ansem stopped pacing and turned to face the two men, removing his arms from their previous position and pointing in various directions as he gave his orders.

"You," he said to one of the two soldiers in front of him, "Put together a squad consisting of ten of your most skilled men."

"And you," he said to the other, "Contact the Elementals immediately."

* * *

Kisaki shoved open the doors to the training room, causing them to swing wide open as she walked through and then wobble back and forth for a few seconds after swinging shut. As usual, she had arrived before Zexion--but this time, however, the room was not completely empty.

Standing on the far end of the room was Lexaeus, arms crossed and eyes constantly moving as he watched the room's other inhabitant. The other man using the training room was Otonashi, and he appeared to be practicing with his whip-like, hook-tipped weapon.

Kisaki watched from across the room as the silver-haired man lashed his weapon forward and clenched his free hand into a fist. As the weapon snapped back to its normal position, a blade of solid metal tore upward through the floor of the training room, staying in place for a few seconds before dissolving away into grayish-colored energy.

"That was closer," the larger man said, "You were almost able to call upon your powers at the exact moment that you struck with your weapon this time."

"Not close enough," Otonashi said, wiping some sweat off of his forehead. He swung his bladed whip once again, attempting to synchronize his powers with the hook on the end as he struck.

Instead, several metal spikes jutted up through the floor, loosely following the arc of the whip as it flew through the air. It was an improvement, though not much of one.

Sighing, he dematerialized his weapon and sat down on the floor, where he was soon joined by his superior officer.

"Don't give up just yet, Otonashi. Not all weapons and powers fit together effortlessly--you need to keep practicing."

"I know," he said, "But it almost seems like mine don't _want_ to work. No matter how much I try, no matter how well I time it... they never really come together."

Lexaeus turned his head toward the other man and placed one large hand on his shoulder.

"Then continue training your skills apart from each other. When you have mastered both... then you can focus on combining them."

The sound of footsteps coming across the training room's floor caused Lexaeus to glance up, noticing Kisaki's presence in the room for the first time. Otonashi also turned in her direction, waving slightly to the girl before standing up.

"Ah, Kisaki," Lexaeus said, slowly standing up to his full height. "Is it time for your training session with Zexion already?"

"Yeah," she answered, "He's late again."

"Otonashi," the larger man said, "I promised Zexion that I would assist him with Kisaki's training today. You may come back for additional training later, at any time when I am not occupied."

The silver-haired man nodded, then turned and headed toward one of the room's many exits. Almost as soon as he was gone, Kisaki had ran up to Lexaeus and began to tug on one of his sleeves, apparently trying to get his attention. He turned his head toward her, slightly confused by this.

"Hmm?"

"You're gonna help Zexy teach me how to use my weapon today, right?"

"That was what Zexion asked me for help with, yes."

A minute or two of silence passed before Zexion finally arrived, walking through the front door of the training room and quickly heading over toward where his trainee and his closest friend were both already waiting.

"Sorry I took so long," the short man said, setting the suitcase containing the Zero Gear down on the floor beside him. "The Fangirl Detection System had a minor glitch, and Zagan just _had _to be off on one of his endless bathroom breaks at the time... Vexen and I had to stay behind to patch things up."

"It's probably better that you're a bit late," Lexaeus said, "Otherwise, Otonashi would have had to end his training a few minutes early."

"Hmm? I thought Otonashi had already completed all the required training over a year ago."

"Yes, but he's been having trouble with the way his powers and weapon interact. He came to me for additional training to help master his abilities."

"Ah."

While Zexion and Lexaeus were distracted by their discussion about Otonashi's training, Kisaki had picked up the small suitcase containing the Zero Gear and opened it up. After plucking the delicate-looking silvery ring out of the suitcase, she sat the empty container back down on the floor quietly enough that neither of the two men noticed.

When she slipped the Zero Gear around her wrist, however, they both snapped back to attention.

"Kisaki, what are you--"

Before Zexion could even finish his sentence, the familiar aura of pale-green energy flared up around Kisaki's body, filling the air around her with the same barely-audible buzzing noise and odd feeling as it had every other time. Only seconds passed before the energy began to solidify in Kisaki's hands, and in a flash of light, her spear appeared.

Zexion, who had braced himself for another shockwave like the last time, breathed a sigh of relief as he removed his arms from in front of his face. Lexaeus just stood, silently as usual, and took a good look at Kisaki's weapon.

"That was unexpected," the shorter man said. "It seems you've already improved."

Lexaeus chuckled slightly.

"It seems you won't be able to find out after all."

Kisaki looked a bit confused, turning to face the large man and blinking a few times before speaking.

"Find out what?"

"When I asked Lexaeus to help with your training, I mentioned how the shockwave from your weapon's appearance knocked me down. I was a bit curious as to whether or not it would have such an effect on someone stronger than myself."

"Hmm," Kisaki said, spinning her spear around in one hand. "So Lexaeus is a lot more powerful than you are?"

"Very much so," he answered, taking a few steps back and sitting down on the bleachers along the edge of the training room.

"Though you'll find that his power is a bit more... straightforward than my own."

Lexaeus stepped forward and crossed his arms in front of his massive chest, glanced back to Zexion for a moment, and then focused his attention on Kisaki and spoke.

"First, I want to see exactly what you're capable of. Attack me at full force, as if I were an enemy."

Kisaki nodded slightly, hesitating for a few moments before readying her spear in what appeared to be a poor imitation of Xaldin's stance. Lexaeus nodded as well, keeping his arms crossed and not moving from his position. He didn't appear to be preparing for an attack at all.

Gripping her spear tightly, Kisaki charged and thrust the weapon forward. Just when it seemed that Lexaeus was about to be stabbed in the gut, his right arm whipped out with unexpected speed and grabbed the shaft of the weapon. Instantly, Kisaki's charge ground to a halt--though she easily outmatched Zexion when it came to physical strength, Lexaeus was able to hold her off with little effort. No matter how hard she pushed, even using both hands, she couldn't budge her spear once it was within the huge man's grasp.

"You have plenty of strength," he said, maintaining his hold on Kisaki's weapon but stepping slightly to the side. "The problem is that you don't know how to use it."

As Lexaeus loosened his grip on her weapon, Kisaki stumbled and nearly fell to the ground. She had been pushing as hard as she could--so when he finally did let go, she was thrown completely off balance.

"I noticed you're attempting to copy Xaldin's battle stance. That's not a bad place to start, but you must remember that your weapon is very different from Xaldin's."

"It is? But they're both spears..."

"There are many kinds of spears, Kisaki. Each one requires a different fighting style."

Zexion, still sitting on the bleachers, looked up from his notes for a moment and spoke up.

"Think of it this way. It's hard to imagine Saix using his claymore the same way that D'aal wields his rapier, or Michiko and her longsword... and yet all three are swords."

Kisaki paused for a second, regaining her balance and listening as Zexion spoke. She seemed to understand, though she didn't say anything in response; instead, she shifted her stance slightly and held her spear with both hands.

"That's better," Lexaeus said, "Now, try again."

Just as Kisaki moved her feet in preparation to charge, the sound of a Fangirl alarmed blared from the speakers at each corner of the training room. She stumbled again, jabbing her spear into the polished wooden floor in order to keep from falling over; Zexion closed his book and stood up, while Lexaeus turned slightly but otherwise did not react.

The Fangirl alarm continued to ring for what seemed like several minutes before, finally, the sound stopped. Lexaeus turned back toward Kisaki, and she once again shifted her feet and hands into her most recent attempt at a fighting stance. Before anyone could make a move, however, the door to the training room swung open and Demyx came running in.

"Hey, you guys!", he yelled across the room, pausing to catch his breath before continuing. "Zexion!"

"What's the problem?", the shorter man asked. He suspected that Demyx was just looking for someone to send out on the Fangirl alarm, though he chose not to say so.

"Something weird's going on with the Fangirl swarm," he said, "Vexen sent me over here to find you. Says you've gotta come see this!"

Zexion suspected that those weren't Vexen's _exact _words, though they did get the point across--something strange was happening, and it wasn't just another glitch in the Fangirl Detection System.

"Lexaeus," the blue-haired man said, turning toward his large friend. "I take it you'll be able to continue Kisaki's training session without me?"

The giant nodded, pausing for a moment before speaking.

"That shouldn't be a problem."

With that, Zexion dematerialized his book and quickly walked over toward the other end of the room. Demyx waved goodbye to Lexaeus and Kisaki, then noticed that Zexion had already left without him. He immediately spun around, seeing the training room's front door swing shut as Zexion passed through it.

"Hey, wait up!"

* * *

In the Fangirl Detection System's room, a small crowd of Organization members had gathered around the main computer, staring up at the screens that showed the most recent Fangirl swarm. The place was absolutely crawling with Fangirls, except for one area in the center of the map. By itself, this fact wouldn't have been especially strange--it's not uncommon for Fangirls to focus on specific areas and avoid others, so an empty spot on a map wasn't cause for alarm. This, however, was something completely different.

"Bloody hell," Luxord mumbled, "Something's destroying the Fangirls."

Zagan stroked his beard slightly, keeping his face glued to the screen.

"Sure looks like it," he said, "But the question is... who is it? We don't have anybody out there yet."

"Hmm... perhaps this country's government finally realized just how much of a threat Fangirls are," Vexen said. He was about to continue his sentence when something unusual caught his eye.

"Wait... what is _that?_"

At first, the out-of-place symbol appeared to be nothing more than a glitch on the screen, but its appearance and movement were too consistent for that to be the explanation. Glancing around, he noticed that there were three more like it, all positioned somewhere within the area that was devoid of Fangirls.

"Good question," Luxord said, standing up from his seat and leaning forward to get a better look. "Eh... looks like a couple of stray numbers on the screen. Probably just another glitch, I'd say."

"No," Vexen said, "It can't be. They're only in the area where all the Fangirls have been destroyed, and they move further outward as more Fangirls are cleared out."

Zagan adjusted his glasses, then turned toward Vexen and spoke.

"So... whoever's out there wiping out Fangirls is being picked up by our system."

"That seems to be the most logical explanation. We've never encountered this kind of situation before, but the Fangirl Detection System only has predefined symbols for Fangirls and members of our Organization..."

"If another being with similar powers were to be detected, it should still attempt to display their position... but without a defined symbol, it defaults to marking them with simple numbers."

At this moment, Zexion and Demyx--both out of breath from sprinting through the halls and up the stairs--ran into the room. Zexion immediately headed for the computer system, while Demyx just stopped to catch his breath at the door.

"What's happening?"

"Ah, Zexion," Vexen said, turning around to face the shorter man. "Just look at the screen. Notice anything unusual?"

"There's an gap in the Fangirl swarm... and it's growing larger by the second."

"Indeed. It appears that someone else is out there fighting the Fangirls--four of them, I would guess. Notice the small numbers in the area without any Fangirls... whoever it is, they're being detected by our system."

Zexion brushed some of his hair out of his face, then spoke.

"So... are we going to send anyone out there? Whoever's destroying the Fangirls doesn't appear to need any help."

Vexen nodded and grinned.

"That's exactly why I called you in. Though we most likely won't have to send anyone to fight the Fangirls, the fact that someone else out there has the power to do so is something that _must_ be investigated."

He paced back and forth slightly, occasionally glancing back up at the screen and continuing to speak as he went.

"I was planning to send you and Luxord to gather information," he said, "Though you can take one of the more combat-oriented members with you as well, if you think you may need backup."

"Sounds like a plan," Luxord said, turning toward Zexion. "So, who else are we going to drag along on this one?"

"Hmm... I'm sure Vexen is planning to stay and monitor the swarm from here," he answered, glancing over to the older man. "And besides, this is mainly an investigative mission... it would seem like a bit of a waste to send _three_ numbered members."

He glanced around the room at all of the other members gathered there. Naminé was even less suited for combat than himself, and both Banbu and Vi had already been sent out on major swarms in the past week. His gaze paused on Zagan.

"Zagan," he said, catching the man's attention, "Hasn't it been a while since you've been sent to respond to a Fangirl alarm?"

"Who, me?"

He scratched his head and laughed slightly, then held his hands out in front of himself and waved them around a bit for emphasis as he continued.

"Well, I'm not really much of a fighter, you know... if something goes wrong and you guys have to finish off that swarm, having a guy like me along won't be much help."

Banbu turned, a slightly confused look on his face.

"What're you talking about? Back when I was still in training, Axel said you were one of the strongest out of all the non-numbered members."

"Well, uh, you see... Zexion's right. I might've been a decent fighter back when I finished my training, but that was a while back... and I haven't been out on a Fangirl alarm in a _long_ time."

He shrugged, adjusted his glasses, and then put his hands back down on the arms of his chair.

"So my fighting's gotten... a little rusty, to say the least."

Zexion sighed. He continued to glance around the room, eventually stopping as his eyes focused on a green-haired girl standing, along with Banbu and Vi, behind the chair where Luxord was sitting.

"Michiko... I take it you haven't let your skills slip as far as Zagan has?"

She shook her head.

"Good. You will be accompanying Luxord and I on this mission. We most likely won't be forced into a combat situation, but in case it does happen, you'll need to be ready."

"Zagan," Vexen said, turning in his chair to face him. "Prepare the Dimensional Hippievan for transport to the site of the swarm."

* * *

Only a few minutes later, the Hippievan came roaring out from the tunnel in the side of the mountain, rocks shifting back into place to disguise the opening as the vehicle passed through. With a flash of energy, the van disappeared into thin air.

Zexion had volunteered to drive the van, and Luxord took the front seat, attaching his favorite fuzzy dice to the rear-view mirror. Michiko sat in one of the two seats in the middle of the van, just watching as the two older men navigated through the bizarre space within the portals. Before long, it had passed through another portal and rolled to a stop in a small gravel parking lot somewhere in a historical-looking city.

"Wow," Michiko said, gazing out the window. "All of these buildings look so _old._ Where are we?"

"Not entirely sure," Luxord said, glancing back toward the girl. "Didn't get a chance to ask, what with all the hubbub over those strange signals the computer was picking up."

"There certainly don't appear to be any Fangirls around," Zexion said, opening the door to the van and hopping out. "So we must have arrived within the area where they've already been wiped out."

Luxord and Michiko climbed out of the vehicle as well, and everyone shut their doors as quietly as possible in order to avoid alerting anyone who might be around--either Fangirls, or the source of the mysterious signals on the Fangirl Detection System.

"Keep as quiet as possible," Zexion whispered, "And don't go charging out into the open, even if you see a Fangirl. We don't know anything about the four signals the system was picking up, but if they're capable of wiping out a swarm like this so quickly, they must be at least as powerful as one of us."

The other two nodded, then proceeded to follow Zexion as quietly as they possibly could, making sure not to do anything that would alert others to their presence. As they walked down a narrow alley, Zexion suddenly stopped and held one hand back, motioning for the others to stay still as well.

"I'm picking up something," he said, sniffing the air slightly. "Fangirls... and plenty of them. But the scent is already fading... this was definitely the site of a major battle, and the Fangirls didn't stand a chance."

They continued onward, peeking around the edges of the old brick buildings before walking out onto the sidewalk. After taking a good look at the street they were on, they began walking down it, keeping on the lookout for Fangirls or any other suspicious characters. As they passed an old, abandoned-looking church, Zexion suddenly stopped.

"That's odd," he said, sniffing the air for a moment before continuing. "The scent of Fangirls has almost completely faded from this street. This must have been the area where our mysterious Fangirl-fighters started."

He walked around a bit, stopping after every few steps and sniffing the air. Eventually, he turned back toward Luxord and Michiko and spoke once again.

"And that's not all. There's another scent in the air... it's completely different from anything I've ever detected before. It's faint, but... something else besides Fangirls has definitely been here."

Luxord scratched his beard slightly.

"I suppose that'd be our four mysterious signals, then?"

"Most likely. I can't pinpoint four separate scents, but they do appear to have left this area shortly after the Fangirls were cleared out."

"Well," Michiko said, walking down the street away from the old church, "Let's go after them, then!"

"That may not be such a good idea," Zexion said, following the green-haired girl for a few steps and then grabbing her shoulder to keep her from rushing ahead on her own.

"We still don't know who these people are, or how they might react upon meeting us... all we _do _know is that they're fighting the Fangirls. And that alone is no guarantee that they're on our side."

Michiko stopped walking and groaned.

"Yeah, I guess you're right..."

"That doesn't mean we aren't going to follow them," Luxord said, "We'll just have to make sure we aren't seen, that's all."

* * *

"Whoever's wiping out those Fangirls is doing a pretty good job," Zagan said, staring at the computer screen in front of him.

The massive cluster of pink dots symbolizing Fangirls was now almost completely cleared away. Replacing it were four smaller groups, spread out across the city; the four unknown signals, represented by plain numbers, had split up to follow them. The symbols representing Zexion, Luxord, and Michiko were heading rapidly toward one of the four, though they still had quite a ways to go before they would be close enough to see who they were or what was going on.

"I guess they haven't seen any of 'em yet," Banbu said, leaning back in the chair he had snatched from Luxord shortly after the gambler left.

"Zexion has probably detected their scent by now," Vexen said, "But yes, you're correct. It's highly unlikely that our team has spotted the source of any of the four unknown signals just yet."

"They're getting pretty close to that one," Vi said, pointing at the spot on the screen where one of the four signals was located.

Just as the dark-haired girl said, the symbols marking the positions of the Organization members were coming very close to one of the three unknown signals, marked by the number "1" in a small, unspectacular-looking font. There were only a handful of Fangirls remaining around this one, whereas each of the other three had at least a small crowd. Maybe this one was stronger than the others, or maybe the rest had just gone after bigger groups of Fangirls--it was impossible to tell from what little information the Fangirl Detection System showed.

"Looks like they're gonna have to hurry," Zagan said, "That part of the swarm's almost gone, and I can't think of any reason why our mystery signals would hang around too long after their work's done."

* * *

"The scent's stronger in this direction," Zexion said, pausing again to sniff the air as the others walked a few feet ahead of him. "Both the scent of Fangirls and the unknown one I picked up before. We must be getting close."

Luxord and Michiko waited for Zexion to catch up, then all three of them continued walking down the street as fast as they could without making too much noise. The sound of Fangirlish giggles reached their ears for just a moment before being drowned out by something much louder--a massive explosion, close enough that they could see the flash of light and the smoke rising afterward. The sounds of Fangirls giggling were instantly silenced.

"Sounds like whoever's over there just finished off the last of the Fangirls," Zexion whispered, picking up speed slightly. The others followed suit, and before long they were running down the street as fast as they could.

As he ran, Zexion raised one of his hands into the air. Blue-black energy swirled around it for a second, then spread outward and surrounded all three of the Organization members, forming a translucent dome of energy.

"This should work," he mumbled, glancing to Luxord and Michiko for a second before he continued running. "Nobody outside the reach of my illusion powers will be able to see or hear us, so we can get as close as we want. Just make sure you don't move outside of that dome's range."

They both nodded, and then moved a bit closer to Zexion as they ran, glancing to the sides occasionally to make sure they were still within range of the illusion. In a matter of seconds, they reached the front door of another building--the closest one to the scene of the battle, based on where the flash of the explosion had come from.

There was a mechanical _beep_ from around the corner, and all three members of the black-cloaked team stopped to listen.

"My section's all clear of Fangirls," a male voice said. "How about you guys?"

More voices buzzed in, sounding slightly garbled as if speaking through a poor-quality radio channel.

"Done already? Damn. Still got about a dozen left over here."

"Seems like half a swarm shows up every time I think I'm finished..."

"Can't talk now," another voice said. This one, unlike the others, was clearly female. Fangirlish giggles, followed by a grunt and a series of explosions, blared through over the radio, and then the voice continued.

"Sorry about all the noise. They just won't stop coming..."

There was a metallic-sounding _clank_ from around the corner of the building, and then several heavy footsteps. The three Organization members rushed over to the corner and peeked around just in time to see a tall man standing with his back to them, his body completely encased in armor. Even his face was completely disguised, hidden away behind the darkened visor of a horned helmet.

"I'm heading back," he said, apparently speaking into the handle of the massive, vaguely key-shaped weapon that he carried. "You three can take care of your Fangirls without my help, right?"

The other three voices crackled through the fuzzy, radio-like speaker, answering almost in unison.

"Go ahead. I can handle 'em."

"Yeah... no problems here."

"Just finished my last one."

The armored man nodded, then raised his weapon toward the sky. He pressed a button somewhere on the handle, and immediately it began to disassemble itself on its own, its parts circling around him in midair. He lowered his hand, and the parts floating in the air around him reassembled themselves into some sort of vehicle, looking closer to a giant golden jetski than anything else.

As the man jumped up onto the odd vehicle and began to rise into the air over the city, Zexion was the only one of the black-cloaked group to speak, mumbling one short sentence as he stared blankly ahead.

"So this is our mysterious Fangirl fighter..."


	12. Ties to the Past

**CHAPTER 11**  
_~ Ties to the Past ~_

Roxas sat with his legs crossed and eyes closed, absolutely still and silent. Across from him, as usual, were Marluxia and Xaldin; while the pink-haired man appeared to be meditating as well, the hairy elf occasionally opened his eyes for a moment and glanced around the room, as if checking to see if anything about Roxas had changed.

Several minutes passed, but in the total silence of the room, it seemed like an eternity. And then, finally, Roxas opened his eyes and stood up.

"I can tell I'm finally getting somewhere with this," he said, breaking the silence and catching the attentions of the two older members. "But there's still something missing. I've been meditating for hours now, but I haven't heard _anything _from Xion."

Marluxia nodded, then stood up as well. Xaldin followed shortly afterward, propping himself up on the small table in the center of the room as he pulled himself back to his feet.

"Perhaps this room has something to do with that," Marluxia said. He walked over and opened the door, and then continued. "Try again... but this time, try finding a nice, open place outside, instead of staying in this cramped little room."

"Outside? Like... down by the ocean or something?"

Xaldin shrugged.

"Sounds like a good place to me. Plenty of flat rocks down there to sit on, y'know..."

The three of them left the room, walking down the hallways of the Organization's base. After taking several turns, Marluxia and Xaldin stopped in front of the entrance to the training room; Roxas continued walking for a few seconds before realizing that his two companions were no longer following him.

"Hey," he said, turning back to face them, "Where are you guys going?"

"We have some work to do," Marluxia said, beginning to push open the door in front of him.

"Yeah," Xaldin snickered, "That's putting it mildly. We've gotta train some of the newbies today, and neither of 'em have even figured out how to summon their weapons yet."

"You should be fine without us, now that you've picked up the basics," Marluxia said. "And if something does go wrong, Otonashi's down there on the rocks fishing... the two of you should be able to handle anything that might come up."

Roxas nodded slightly, then turned and headed down the hallway toward the base's main entrance, waving goodbye to the two older men as he went.

* * *

Just like almost every day since she had first joined, Kisaki stood waiting in the training room for Zexion to arrive. This time, she was also expecting Lexaeus; for the past four days, he had assisted Zexion during their training sessions, teaching the girl how to use her weapon with some degree of skill instead of just flailing it about aimlessly.

She noticed the door to the training room swing open, a black-sleeved arm holding it and preventing it from slamming back shut. Expecting either her superior officer or his large friend, she was surprised to see a man with shaggy pink hair walk through the door, followed by a tall, heavily-muscled elf with long braids and large sideburns.

"Marluxia? Xaldin? What're you guys doing in here?"

"We have training sessions scheduled with some of the new recruits," the pink-haired man answered, taking a few steps into the training room before stopping to look around. "And speaking of that... where are they?"

Kisaki stopped to think for a second, then spoke.

"Um... I think I saw them come through here a while ago. A little elf girl and a guy with brownish hair."

"That's them all right," Xaldin said, scratching one of his sideburns. "Guess they must've left once they got tired of waitin' around for us to show up."

* * *

Roxas carefully climbed down the series of rocky ledges near the base of the mountain, trying to avoid looking down at the waves crashing against the cliffs below him as he went. He could see Otonashi sitting along the edge of a flat rock just a little bit further down, using his weapon as a fishing pole; so far, it appeared that he hadn't caught anything.

_"How on Earth does that guy do it?",_ Roxas thought, hopping down onto a slightly slippery ledge and grabbing at the wall next to him to regain his balance. _"He comes down here to fish all the time, but he never falls or gets hurt or anything..."_

A few more short jumps, and the spiky-haired boy had cleared the most dangerous part of the climb; all that was left was a series of rocks piled up in an almost staircase-like formation. In a matter of seconds, he was standing on the same large, flat rock outcropping where Otonashi was fishing.

His footsteps against the rock caused the silver-haired man to turn and glance up at him, shrugging slightly before returning his focus to the ocean.

"Marluxia sent me down here to practice meditation," Roxas said, sitting down a few feet away from the older man. "He said it might help if I try it outside, instead of staying in that little room up there..."

"Hmm," Otonashi said, staring straight ahead at the horizon. "Makes sense. A room like that's too quiet, too enclosed... almost unnatural. Having the sounds of the sea around you might make a difference."

Roxas nodded, shifting into the same cross-legged position he had used before and closing his eyes, just listening to the sound of the waves crashing against the rocks all around him. A few minutes passed before he opened them again, turning toward Otonashi and asking him a question.

"Why do you always come down here, anyway?"

It took nearly a minute for an answer to come, and when it did it was surprisingly short.

"To fish."

There was another long pause, and then he turned toward the boy and spoke once again.

"Being so close to the ocean down here... it reminds me of home."

Otonashi continued to look in Roxas' direction, his eyes widening slightly as if he had just noticed something surprising. He calmed down quickly, but still kept his gaze locked onto his young companion, completely ignoring his fishing. Roxas noticed this and turned to face him.

He was about to ask the older man why he was staring, but before he could open his mouth to speak, he had his answer.

"You remind me of someone."

"Huh? Who?"

"This is probably going to sound ridiculous," Otonashi said, "But years ago, when I still lived back home... my son was good friends with a little boy with spiky hair. You look just like him."

"Really? Huh. That's weird."

Otonashi turned back to the ocean, glancing down at the water below him to make sure he hadn't gotten a bite while he wasn't paying attention.

"What was his name?"

The silver-haired man sighed.

"I can't remember... I never really knew the boy very well. He's probably been dead for almost two years now, anyway... just like everyone else."

"Dead? What happened?"

"Fangirls," Otonashi said, closing his eyes and lowering his head slightly. "My hometown was attacked by a huge swarm just about two years ago. A few members of Organization XIII showed up to fight them off, but it was too late... the Fangirls had already wrecked the place."

"Vexen and Lexaeus searched through the rubble once they had finished wiping out the Fangirls... that's when they found me."

Roxas noticed that the silver-haired man's eyes appeared to be on the verge of tears, though he seemed to be trying to hide it.

"Out of that entire town... I was the only survivor."

* * *

Across the room, Marluxia and Xaldin had begun their training sessions with the new members Xemnas had assigned to them... and still, Zexion had not yet arrived.

Kisaki just sat on the bleachers and waited, watching the others to pass the time. Marluxia and his trainee, a young man with brownish hair, appeared to be quietly practicing some sort of martial arts techniques; Xaldin, on the other hand, had already started the more active portion of his combat training, dodging around with incredible speed as the little elf girl tried in vain to land a solid hit on him.

Neither of the two wore the Organization's signature black cloak, signifying that they had not yet managed to summon their weapon or unleash their powers. Despite this fact, each of them had been members longer than Kisaki, though she wasn't sure exactly how much longer.

Before she had time to think much more about it, however, Zexion came running into the room. Following shortly behind him, walking along on the ceiling somehow, was Xigbar; he flipped back down to the floor just before reaching the room's entrance, slipping through just before the door began to swing shut. Though he had helped her with weapons training for the past few days, Lexaeus was nowhere to be seen.

"Where's Lexaeus?"

"Probably halfway across the base by now," Xigbar said.

"Vexen finally finished testing the strange materials we found in the walls," Zexion added, stopping to catch his breath for a moment before continuing. "Since nobody else could come up with a reason to delay the repairs any longer, Lexaeus was scheduled to begin his work today."

Kisaki glanced back to the other side of the room for a second, noticing that the elf girl had almost grazed Xaldin with a punch this time. She then turned back toward Zexion and Xigbar and asked yet another question.

"So... if Lexaeus is busy, who's going to help with my weapons training?"

Xigbar smirked, then held his hands to his sides. In a flash of purplish-white light, an odd crossbow-like weapon appeared in each hand.

"That's why I'm here. Today you're gonna learn how to defend yourself."

Zexion reached for the suitcase containing the Zero Gear, but apparently the device was no longer necessary--Kisaki held out one hand and her spear flashed into existence on its own, filling the air with the strange buzzing noise for only a fraction of a second before it was fully formed. The one-eyed elf grinned, raised one of his weapons toward Kisaki, and turned his head toward Zexion.

"You might wanna head for the bleachers, Zexy. Standin' out here and gettin' caught in the crossfire wouldn't be too smart."

The shorter man nodded and hurried over to the side of the room, standing just slightly behind the edge of the bleachers. Almost immediately, Xigbar was on the offensive, sending a barrage of arrowhead-shaped bullets flying in Kisaki's direction. She yelped and jumped back in time to avoid the first shot, then began to run around the room as more and more followed.

"Can't keep runnin' forever," Xigbar said. He stopped shooting for a second when his weapon ran out of ammunition; instead of reloading, he simply exchanged it for the one in his other hand and picked up right where he left off.

"That spear's never gonna do ya any good if ya don't _use_ the damn thing!"

Kisaki attempted to take his advice, but she wasn't fast enough; when she paused and tried to swing the spear's point to intercept Xigbar's attacks, she ended up pinned to the bleachers by her cloak instead, held in place by eight bullets.

The old elf dematerialized his weapons and walked over to Kisaki, watching as the bullets that held her against the bleachers vanished and she came tumbling down to the floor. He snickered slightly, then spoke.

"Damn... you were right, Zexion. She _does_ need help."

The girl pushed herself up off the floor and glanced down at her cloak, noticing a series of four small holes on each side. Though the pointed bullets themselves had vanished, the holes they had left behind were still in place.

"Hey, don't worry about the cloak, kid. We've got plenty of spares just in case somethin' like this happens."

He turned and took a few steps away, then spun back around suddenly, startling Kisaki a bit.

"What ya _should _be worryin' about is how you're gonna block my shots next time. I can't keep goin' easy on ya like that forever, y'know."

"_That_ was 'going easy on me?'"

"Think about it. Didn't you notice I was only usin' one gun? If I was taking this seriously, that cloak wouldn't be the only thing that ended up full of holes."

* * *

Zagan sat alone in the Fangirl Detection System's room, stroking his beard with one hand as he watched the pink dots begin to appear on the screen in front of him.

What he was seeing was the very beginnings of a Fangirl swarm--and it wasn't far from the location of the one four days earlier, which had been wiped out by the mysterious armored warriors who apparently shared the Organization's goal of Fangirl extermination. The swarm continued to grow, while Zagan only watched, occasionally glancing over at the door to see if anyone else was approaching.

Apparently, he didn't check the door quite often enough; the next time he turned, he found himself staring directly into the midsection of a black-cloaked woman, causing him to nearly jump out of his seat.

"Larxene!? What're you doing in here?"

She giggled, then rested one of her elbows on Zagan's shoulder, causing him to jump again as a slight static charge passed between them.

"Nothing much. Just stopped by to see if I'd have anything to do today."

Larxene removed her elbow from Zagan's shoulder and yawned, stretching slightly before continuing.

"It gets so _boring _around here sometimes," she said, "Especially when Saix spends all his time hanging around with Xemnas, and all the little newbies are busy training. Seen any Fangirl swarms out there?"

Zagan shrugged, then turned back toward the computer.

"Here's a bunch," he said, pointing up at the screen. "Wouldn't call it a full-blown swarm just yet, but it's getting there fast. Just a minute ago, there wasn't a single Fangirl out there."

Larxene glanced back slightly at the sound of footsteps, rolling her eyes at the sight of Vexen coming through the doorway. The older man avoided her and made a beeline for one of the empty seats next to Zagan, turning toward him after watching the Fangirl Detection System's monitor for a few seconds.

"So," he said, "When, exactly, were you planning on sending out a Fangirl alarm? It's not every day that we get to see the beginnings of a swarm... this may be the last chance we'll have to study such a thing for _months._"

"This one's not far away from that swarm we missed out on four days ago," Zagan answered, not turning away from the screen. "I was watching for any signs of our mysterious armored Fangirl exterminators."

Larxene glanced at the screen for a second, then poked Zagan in the arm, lightly zapping him once again.

"Waiting for somebody else to come in and do the job for you, huh?"

"You _would _see it that way," Vexen snapped, glaring up at Larxene for a moment. "It's clear to me that Zagan is simply interested in seeing more of this mysterious group. I've been hoping for an opportunity to get a first-hand look at them, myself."

He stood up, walking past Zagan and Larxene and heading toward the door. Just before he passed out of sight, he turned back toward the two and said one last thing.

"I'm off to find one of my trainees," he said, "And then we're going to take care of this swarm. Now would be the ideal time to ring the Fangirl alarm, Zagan."

* * *

Kisaki shifted into a battle stance as Xigbar summoned his twin arrowguns once again, this time raising both of them toward the girl. Her cloak was now barely more than a shredded rag, loosely hanging off of her body; only the hood and the part covering her shoulders were intact. The uniform underneath also had a few cuts and holes from the sniper's near-misses, though it seemed that none of the wounds were serious enough to have drawn blood.

"Now you're startin' to get the hang of it," the old elf said, aiming both of his weapons and grinning. "Let's try it with two guns this time."

A pale green aura surrounded the point of Kisaki's spear as she prepared for another volley of bullets; Xigbar either didn't notice or chose to ignore it, as he proceeded with the shooting as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened.

Four shots rang out, and Kisaki swung her spear upward, blocking the first two perfectly. The third zipped past her, cutting yet another hole through her cloak as she stepped to the side. The fourth and last came only inches away from her face before she raised her spear into its path, causing it to ricochet off of the weapon's point and go flying over toward the bleachers where Zexion was sitting.

After nearly dropping his book in a rush to scoot out of the way, the blue-haired man glanced over at the deflected bullet. Half of its length was embedded into the bleachers, but what was left visible looked very strange--rather than the usual grayish color, it was brown and appeared to be made of rock.

As Xigbar took aim and Kisaki raised her spear in preparation for the next step of her training, Zexion reached out with a single finger and carefully poked the petrified bullet, thinking that it wouldn't budge. Instead, it cracked and rapidly began to crumble away; before long, nothing was left but a fine brownish powder filling a small hole in the bleachers.

* * *

Before the sound of the Fangirl alarm had left the air, Vexen was already headed down the hallway toward the Dimensional Hippievan's launch tunnel. Following a few feet behind was a small, dark-haired girl, wearing glasses and carrying a notebook under her arm; she had to almost run just to keep up with the old man's pace.

Vexen suddenly stopped as he reached the tunnel's entrance, noticing that the van was already running and someone was sitting on the driver's side. The girl behind him nearly tripped trying to avoid bumping into her superior officer's back, stumbling a bit before regaining her balance.

"What's going on?", she asked, glancing over at the van for a second before turning and looking up toward Vexen.

"Hmm... it appears that someone else has decided to tag along on our mission."

The two walked up to the van, and Vexen groaned slightly when he noticed who was inside--Larxene. She was reclining in the driver's seat, apparently listening to the radio while she waited for everyone else to show up.

Vexen yanked open the driver's side door and pulled the young woman out of the van by her arm; she almost fell, but then caught herself in a handstand at the last second before flipping back to her feet.

"What was _that_ for!?"

The older man climbed up into the door, closing it and rolling down the window a bit before answering.

"You are _not_ driving this van. Not while I'm in it, anyway."

Larxene stuck out her tongue at Vexen, then grumbled a few curses under her breath, just loud enough for the old man to hear. She then slid open the side door of the Hippievan and hopped in, sitting in one of the middle seats.

After a brief period of silence (as Vexen had turned off the radio), Larxene noticed the dark-haired girl in the passenger's seat, turning toward Vexen to ask another question.

"So... who's this new trainee of yours?"

The old man's eye twitched.

"She's not exactly 'new,' Larxene... she's been in the Organization for almost a year," he said, not even bothering to look back. "I would think that even someone of your limited intelligence would have noticed a new member after that long."

She shrugged.

"_You_ might have time to snoop through the files on every new kid who shows up, but I have more important things to do. Can't you at least tell me her name?"

"It's Estera," she said, glancing back at Larxene for a second before returning her gaze to the notebook on her lap.

There was a brief pause, and then Vexen put his foot on the gas and the van began to roll forward.

"Now... if there are no further questions," he said, glaring at Larxene through the rear-view mirror, "It's time for us to get out there and exterminate that Fangirl swarm."

* * *

Though Roxas was still seated on the slab of flat rock by the sea, he felt like he was floating. Waves smashed against the cliffs all around him, but in his current state, even the raging seas sounded calm; the crashing of waves had faded away into little more than background noise.

Roxas opened his eyes. No, he didn't open his eyes--what he was seeing now was within his own being, though he felt as if he had been transported to some unfamiliar place. He was standing in the center of a tropical island, surrounded by oddly-shaped trees and bright green grass that reminded him of spring. Off in the distance, there was another island; much larger than the one he was on, but too far away to see clearly. It almost seemed like a mirage.

As Roxas gazed off at the distant island, the wind around him suddenly began to pick up, spraying his face with sand. He flinched, then turned and looked in the opposite direction, where he saw two more islands--one was very close and connected by a wooden bridge, while the other was barely visible on the horizon. Roxas took a step, feeling the grass crunch beneath his feet--in this strange inner world, he was barefoot. He glanced down at his own body and found that he was wearing nothing but a pair of red shorts--the same pair he wore in his earliest memories, though they were in considerably better shape.

He walked across the island, approaching the bridge leading to the next one. The wind grew weaker, stopping almost completely as he came to the middle of the bridge; the air became colder, causing him to shiver slightly. When he crossed over to the second island, his surroundings suddenly changed again, though they weren't any more familiar to him than before--the island faded away, replaced by a small, dimly-lit room with an old computer in one corner. The computer's screen flashed green for a moment, then slowly dimmed before the machine shut down entirely.

"What... what is this place?"

The bridge he had crossed to reach this mysterious room was replaced by an open door, though Roxas couldn't see anything but an empty hallway beyond it. He turned and looked around the rest of the room, seeing several bookcases, a television, and finally a bed... which was not empty. Sitting on the edge was a familiar-looking girl with short black hair, wearing what appeared to be a Japanese school uniform.

Roxas gasped.

"Xion?"

* * *

The Dimensional Hippievan came to a sudden stop, just short of bumping into one of the parking lot's concrete dividers. The city around them was only a mile or two away from the area where the armored warriors had wiped out a Fangirl swarm four days earlier, but it looked completely different--instead of ancient wood and brick buildings, the houses and stores here appeared much more modern.

"Hmm... based on Zexion's notes from the last swarm in this area," Vexen said, flipping through a few papers of his own, "We must be about a mile outside of this city's historic district..."

He put the notes away, then opened the driver's-side door and climbed out of the van, slamming the door behind him. Larxene and Estera followed shortly after, joining the old man at the front of the van.

"If there's any sign of those armored warriors, conceal yourselves from them and take some time to observe their abilities. If not... focus your efforts on exterminating the Fangirls."

A strange moan, sounding like someone in extreme pain, reached the ears of the three Organization members, and instantly they were on guard. Snow flurries filled the air for a second as Vexen's shield materialized on his arm, followed by a crackle of electricity as Larxene summoned her knives. Estera's weapon summoning was quite a bit less flashy; for just a moment, a barely-visible ripple appeared in the air in front of her, quickly solidifying into a long, grayish-blue staff with a black orb hovering above it.

They walked across the parking lot in the direction that the moan had come from, peeking around the corners of buildings; before long, they found the source of the sound--a pregnant woman lying on the sidewalk, breathing heavily and looking as if she had tripped and fallen on a loose chunk of concrete.

Continuing their search, they passed by several more pregnant women, all of which seemed to be lightly injured or in distress for some reason. Though it seemed a bit suspicious that so many pregnant women would be hanging around within the space of a single city block, none of the Organization members wanted to have to be the one to ask them if anything was wrong--so they just kept walking, passing a small drug store and making a right turn onto the next street.

A creepy giggle immediately alerted them to the presence of Fangirls. There was a small crowd of Glompers and Squealers milling about in the middle of the empty street, but there were also several of another kind mixed in with them.

"What is _that?_", Larxene asked, leaning forward and squinting in an attempt to get a better look at the closest of the unfamiliar Fangirls. "They look like they've all got giant beer guts, or something."

Vexen's eye twitched, and then a worried look crossed his face.

"I believe I know what kind of Fangirl we're dealing with here... and it's far worse than I had expected."

He held out one hand toward the swarm, releasing a blast of cold air that froze the ground beneath the creatures. The unknown Fangirls leaped to the side to avoid the icy patch, while the rest slipped and stumbled around, eventually falling.

"Take a good look, Estera," he said, pointing to one of the large-bellied Fangirls that was now clearly visible. "This will be your first battle with the dreaded Preggo Fangirl... one of the most disgusting creatures I have ever been unlucky enough to encounter."

"_Preggo_ Fangirls?", Larxene groaned, "Ugh. Don't tell me all those pregnant ladies back there were--"

"Yes," Vexen interrupted, "There's no doubt in my mind that those women had already fallen victim to these Fangirls. Whatever you do, don't let them get to you... I have no intention of taking time out from this fight to abort some kind of demonic Fangirl-fetus."

Larxene glared at him, then smirked.

"Don't worry," she said, holding up all of her knives and causing electricity to arc between them. "I always use protection."

She flung one handful of knives into the swarm, causing several Glompers to fall down and shatter into computer code just as they had finally managed to regain their balance on the ice.

"Besides... I'd say _you're_ the one that has the most to worry about."

Vexen shuddered, not even wanting to think about that possibility.

"Vexen, Larxene... I'll keep those Preggo Fangirls distracted," Estera said, gripping her staff with both hands and lowering her head slightly.

Larxene turned to her and smirked, calling the knives she had thrown before back to her hand in a flash. Vexen just nodded, apparently understanding what his trainee was planning.

"_You'll_ hold them off, huh? And what are we supposed to do?"

"What else?", Vexen said, running into the swarm and sending a Glomper flying with a swing of his shield. "While she keeps the worst of them busy, we clear out the rest. This shouldn't take long."

For once, Larxene had nothing to say; she just nodded in agreement and rushed off so quickly that she could barely be seen as more than a yellow-and-black blur. She came to a stop on top of another Glomper, pinning it to the ground with her legs and repeatedly stabbing it in the chest until it glowed green and shattered. Two Squealers, one on either side of her, took deep breaths and prepared to unleash their sonic blasts on her, but Larxene just jumped up into the air, causing the slow-witted Fangirls to blast each other with their scream attacks instead.

While all this was happening, Estera was only holding her staff and steadily advancing toward the group of Preggo Fangirls. Instead of attacking, they backed away, as if afraid to come too close to her. If one were to look very closely at the area around her, it would be possible to see strange ripples in the air, radiating out from the orb on her staff and washing over the Fangirls; her ability to manipulate fear was forcing the creatures to retreat, even though they could probably overpower her if they tried.

"Huh," Larxene said, smacking a Glomper aside with a haymaker as it attempted to sneak up on her. "The girl was right... she _is _keeping those Preggo Fangirls off our backs."

"Of course," Vexen said, grinning at her as he slammed a Squealer into the ground with his shield and then encased it in ice. "I trained her, after all. She's not going to be _completely_ incompetent... unlike that fool you're training."

"Hey, don't blame me for _that,_" Larxene snapped back, "He was like that when I got him!"

The old man laughed a little, and Larxene glanced back and him and snarled in response before choosing to take her aggressions out on the nearest Fangirl instead. She waited until a Glomper came within an arm's length of her from behind, then suddenly turned, zapping it with streams of electricity from both hands and raising it up into the air. She then spun the creature around a dozen times before finally letting go, sending it flying off into the rest of the swarm, slamming and electrocuting everything in its path. The entire street seemed to glow green for a moment, and then the air was filled with a flurry of zeroes and ones.

Vexen slammed one boot down on the frozen Fangirl at his feet, causing it to shatter along with the ice surrounding it. He then caught another Glomper with an uppercut as it approached, the spikes on his shield decapitating the creature almost instantly. Both parts of the dead Fangirl began to glow brightly as they fell, shattering the moment they touched the ground.

"Looks like that's about all of them," the old man said, hunching over slightly to support the weight of his shield as he wiped some sweat off his forehead with his other hand. "All that's left is... _those _ones. Estera, release them from your hold."

The bespectacled girl nodded, removing one hand from her staff and lowering it slightly. The waves of barely-visible, fear-inducing energy disappeared, and immediately the Prego Fangirls were on the attack. One of them reached down to its stomach and lifted its shirt slightly, revealing a glowing white eye where a normal person's navel would be. The glow shifted to a reddish color, becoming brighter by the second before finally unleashing a beam of pinkish-red energy.

Estera hit the ground, rolling to the side as the beam collided with the asphalt where she had been standing just a second earlier. The other Fangirls giggled slightly, then reached down one by one and revealed their own stomach-eyes, each already beginning to glow with reddish energy.

Vexen raised his shield and deflected one of the beams, sending it bouncing into the outer wall of a nearby building. Larxene zipped out of the way of two beams in a row, countering a moment later with a pair of lightning bolts that sent the offending Fangirls flying backward. Unable to do much of anything to the Fangirls from a long range, Estera simply ran, narrowly avoiding a series of beams from the last of the five Preggo Fangirls.

A man and a woman, both carrying bags of groceries, came walking around the corner of a building, freezing in place at the sight of the battle unfolding before them. One of the Preggo Fangirls noticed them and adjusted its aim, firing another beam from its navel straight toward the couple. They immediately dropped their groceries and ran; after a few steps, the woman caught her foot in a pothole and tripped, and the man paused and looked back for just a second too long.

Just when the beam was about to collide with its unfortunate victim, Vexen's shield came flying into its path; the beam was split into two by the spinning weapon, flying off in two different directions and narrowly missing both of the civilians.

"Sorry," Vexen said, catching his shield as it floated back to his arm, "But you won't be defying the laws of nature today, Fangirls."

He then charged, holding his shield out in front of him to block any incoming attacks. The Preggo Fangirls that Larxene had knocked down were just beginning to stand again when they were suddenly thrown aside, smashed head-first into buildings on either side of the street by two powerful swipes of Vexen's shield. The remaining Fangirls jumped out of the way just in time, though one was still knocked off balance and fell onto its back as Vexen ran past.

Larxene prepared to run toward the Fangirls while they were disoriented and finish them off, but when she tried to move her legs, something squeezed down hard and caused her to nearly fall on her face. One look back confirmed her fears--several small, worm-like Fangirls had wrapped themselves around her ankles, and they were now slithering up her legs, looking up and making strange faces at her as they went.

Electricity crackled around her entire body for a few seconds before exploding outward, sending the strange Fangirls flying in all directions and instantly destroying most of them. She stood back up and cracked her neck, causing small arcs of electricity to spread all over her body for a moment before fading away.

"Okay... what the hell were _those?_"

Just as she had asked, she spotted another small swarm of the legless Fangirls crawling down the street, coming around the corner before heading straight toward her. This time, she didn't let them get close; she threw all of her knives to the ground in their path, then raised her hands to the sky. A thunderbolt came crashing down on the first of the knives, its power spreading from one knife to the next and forming a network of electric beams connecting each of the blades.

The Fangirls mindlessly crawled onward, ignoring the barrier ahead of them; when they attempted to pass through, they were electrocuted to death almost instantly, twitching on the ground for several seconds before shattering. When they were all gone, Larxene snapped her fingers, and her entire set of knives disappeared from their places on the ground and flashed back into existence in her hands.

"Unfortunately, I have a good guess as to where these new Fangirls came from," Vexen said, clobbering the nearest Preggo Fangirl in the face with his shield before continuing. "Ah... no need to explain, there's one of them right now. Just watch."

Larxene turned her attentions toward the other end of the street, where one of the pregnant women they had seen before had just crawled around the corner of the drug store and then collapsed back-first onto the sidewalk, groaning in pain and holding her stomach. Suddenly, her legs flew up into the air, and there was a series of disgusting squelching noises; though neither of them could actually see anything from where they were standing, Larxene and Estera flinched and averted their eyes anyway. Even Vexen, who usually didn't bat an eye at things that would make a normal person feel sick, twitched slightly as the sound reached his ears.

When they looked again, the street ahead of them was flooded with the worm-shaped Fangirls, leaving trails of neon-green slime behind them as they slithered toward the three Organization members.

"What you see here are Nooblet Fangirls," Vexen explained, "Also known as 'Fangirl spawn.' Though each one of them is rather weak on its own... they do have strength in numbers."

He turned and deflected another red beam from the last remaining Preggo Fangirl, then encased its stomach in ice with a wave of his hand, preventing it from firing any more beams until it thawed. It didn't get a chance, however, as the old man lunged forward and thrust the large spike on the top of his shield into the frozen area, nearly splitting the Fangirl in half. The creature shrieked one last time, then fell backwards and shattered.

Estera pointed her staff toward the approaching swarm, causing the orb to float away from the weapon and move on its own. It darted back and forth between the creatures, sniping at them with barely-visible bolts of energy that sent them flying backward but didn't appear to do much damage. Several of the creatures managed to get past the orb, but when they got too close, she swept her staff along the ground, sending them flying off to the side and shattering against the walls and windows of one of the nearby buildings.

Larxene and Vexen glanced at each other for a second, both nodding, then raised one hand each toward the group of Fangirls. The old man growled and clenched his hand into a fist, and all the warmth in the air around the Fangirls was suddenly sucked away; in a matter of seconds, all that was left was a sheet of ice with frozen, twitching Nooblet Fangirls embedded in it.

When the old man lowered his hand and stopped to catch his breath, Larxene raised her hand into the sky and yelled out, calling down a massive bolt of electricity that smashed into the center of the frozen Fangirl-loaf that filled the street. The ice shattered and flew everywhere, melting and then evaporating in midair as it went; the Fangirls inside were destroyed almost as quickly. When the smoke cleared, nothing was left but a small crater in the asphalt and a few stray shards of ice.

Each of the black-cloaked warriors unsummoned their weapons, then began to walk back the way they came, heading toward the parking lot where the Dimensional Hippievan waited.

* * *

High above the city streets, another black-cloaked man watched as the three climbed into the Dimensional Hippievan and flew off into the portal leading back home. He had the cloak's hood pulled up over his head, completely concealing his face; not even his chin was clearly visible through the darkness.

"Hmm... those guys should be here by now."

Almost as if on cue, three armored figures appeared in the distance, speeding toward the site of the Organization's battle against the most recent Fangirl outbreak. They touched down in the middle of the damaged street, jumping off of their vehicles before converting them back to their original shape--metallic, almost key-shaped weapons, each different from the other but sharing a few basic features.

Up on the roof of a nearby building, the cloaked man laughed slightly at the sight of them. He then held out one hand, causing a dark yellowish energy to almost drip down from his fingers until it reached the edge of the building. It then solidified into something resembling a rope, though it appeared to be composed of many small strands of some strange fungus.

As the unknown black figure slowly lowered himself down the side of the building, the armored knights in the street below looked over the scene.

"Looks like someone else got to the Fangirls first."

The sole female of the group turned toward the tall man for a second, then knelt down and took a closer look at the crater in the middle of the street. She picked up a small shard of ice, turning it over in her hand several times and watching as it rapidly melted.

"Solid ice... in sixty-degree weather? What _happened_ here?"

"That crater looks pretty nasty, too," the younger male said, crouching down beside the girl. "I wonder what could've caused this much damage?"

The tallest of the three lowered his head slightly, looking down at the crater that was now beginning to fill with water as the ice melted. Then, after a short pause, he spoke.

"Someone with power... power comparable to that of the Keyblade."

"Whoa," the younger one said, jumping slightly as if startled. "Someone else out there with power like ours... is that even possible?"

"At least they seem to be fighting the Fangirls," the girl said, standing back up now that the ice had all melted away. "If they were on the other side... then we'd really have something to worry about."

They continued to look over the scene for several minutes, looking for anything that would point toward the identity of whoever had destroyed the Fangirls. Though there were a few recent cuts in the road and dents in various walls, none of them could be linked to a specific weapon--at least, not to any weapon the armored trio had ever seen.

The sound of footsteps behind them caused all three to turn, raising their weapons in preparation for a fight. The black-cloaked figure standing against the wall of the building held his hands out in front of him and waved them slightly, apparently signalling that he meant them no harm.

"Who are you?", the tallest of the three knights said, taking a step toward the cloaked man.

"Oh, no need for introductions just yet," he said, lowering his hands and leaning back against the wall. "I just came to see what you guys looked like up close. Speaking of that... weren't there four of you the last time?"

"The last... you've been monitoring our activities?"

The cloaked man shook his head.

"Nah. Well, not for very long, anyway. Didn't even know you existed until a few days ago, when you wiped out that Fangirl swarm a mile or so from here."

He turned away from the knights slightly and began to pace back and forth along the wall, explaining his situation as he went.

"You see, I'm from another Fangirl extermination group... we call ourselves Organization XIII. But lately I've been feeling like doing things a little bit differently from the boss's orders."

He laughed a little, causing the female knight to cock her head to the side slightly as if confused. Noticing this reaction, he turned toward her and continued where he left off.

"When I heard there was someone else wiping out the Fangirls... well, that's an opportunity I just couldn't pass up. So I came out here to learn a little more about how you guys operate... what you call yourselves, who your boss is, what those weird key-sword things are... you know, just the basics."

There was a moment of silence, and then the youngest of the three warriors nodded, reaching up and removing his helmet. He had spiky, sandy-blonde hair and blue eyes, with facial features that seemed to mirror Roxas perfectly... well, they would if Roxas was a few years older, anyway. The others followed shortly afterward, though neither of their faces were quite as unexpected as the first.

"My name," the girl spoke up, "Is Aqua."

"Terra," the taller man answered.

"And I'm Ventus... but most people just call me Ven."

The cloaked man reached up and placed one gloved hand on his chin, looking almost as if he was stroking a beard, though none could be seen beyond the shadows cast by his hood.

"We call ourselves the Keybearers," Aqua explained, "Those who wield weapons known as Keyblades in order to protect the world from the horrors of Fangirls."


	13. Reconnect

**CHAPTER 12**  
_~ Reconnect ~_

Otonashi sat on the edge of the flat rock, using his hook-tipped weapon as a fishing pole. Several seagulls flew overhead for a moment, heading toward their nests further up the rocks. A few feet away, Roxas was completely silent and motionless, deep in meditation.

For the past two days, the boy had been coming down to this spot in order to continue the meditation training that Marluxia and Xaldin had begun, though Otonashi had not been able to learn much about the reasons behind it. All he knew was that Roxas had apparently gotten progressively better at it with each day that passed.

On the first day, Roxas had been abruptly yanked out of his meditative state before he could get anywhere; the resulting shock wore him out to the point where he was unable to try again for the rest of the day. On the second day, he was able to overcome whatever had disrupted his calm the first time, and he stayed completely still for hours before finally opening his eyes again. This day was likely to be more of the same--Roxas had already been sitting there for an hour, and there were no signs that this would change anytime soon.

For a brief moment, he felt as if someone was watching him; Roxas' eyes were still shut just as tightly as before, so he turned and glanced around at the path leading back up the mountainside instead. There was nobody there--he and Roxas were alone on the flat rock, just as they had been for the past hour.

"Huh," he mumbled to himself, turning his attention back to his fishing. "That's strange..."

* * *

"She's finally starting to improve," Zexion said, glancing over to Lexaeus as the two watched Kisaki attempt to deflect all of Xigbar's shots. "It took far longer than normal, but it seems she's finally grown used to that weapon of hers."

Lexaeus just nodded, silently watching as the old elf fired another barrage of arrowhead-shaped bullets at the girl and she spun and flipped while swinging her spear about in all directions to deflect them all. Though at first glance it resembled her initial unskilled flailing, she was obviously doing _something _different now--her cloak, which had to be replaced twice during her days training under Xigbar, only had one or two holes in it so far, rather than being ripped to shreds.

"It's odd," the large man said, "She fights the same way she did when we first found her... but now it's actually working, somehow."

"I've noticed," Zexion said, nodding slightly. "I'm not sure if she just wasn't sure of herself at first, or if she was holding back for some reason, but..."

Lexaeus turned toward his blue-haired friend and interrupted his sentence.

"Holding back?"

"I'm not sure why she would, exactly," he answered, "But there's just that nagging feeling that she wasn't trying. Especially the first time she and I sparred--she seemed to flip back and forth between normal and incompetent within the same fight."

He flipped over a few pages of his book, moving his hands over the page and causing words to appear where there was only blank paper before.

"Perhaps she was afraid that, if she fought seriously, she might accidentally unleash that power the Zero Gear drew out on her first day of training."

Xigbar reloaded his arrowguns, then fired off two shots from each as Kisaki ran toward him, causing her to stop just in time to roll out of the way before leaping back to her feet and continuing her charge.

"Good!", the one-eyed elf said, grinning slightly. "You're mixin' it up a little, not always tryin' to block 'em all. Keep it up!"

She gripped her weapon with both hands and lunged forward, thrusting its point toward Xigbar, but before it could make contact he jumped into the air and began to flip over her head. She turned, expecting to see him land behind her, but instead he just hung upside-down in midair, completely defying gravity.

He tapped her on the shoulder, causing her to spin around, and then completed his flip while she wasn't watching her back. Upon landing, he dematerialized one of his guns and instead struck with an elbow to the back of the head, knocking Kisaki flat on the floor.

Zexion closed his book and stood up, while Lexaeus just remained in his seat and watched. Kisaki was lying on the floor, apparently unconscious; her weapon fell by her side and disappeared with a flash of green light, as any member of the Organization's weapon did when its wielder no longer had enough strength left to maintain its physical form. Xigbar scoffed and dematerialized his other gun.

"C'mon, is that all you've got?", he said, frowning down at the fallen girl. "One little hit and you go down like a bag of rocks? I expected a little more from the girl who knocked down Zexy just from summoning her weapon."

Lexaeus stood, a worried look forming on his face. Zexion's eyes widened slightly as well, and he began to walk over toward the girl to check her condition. Before either of them could get too close, however, she began to slowly push herself back up off the floor. The air suddenly felt different again, just like it had during her earlier weapon-summonings; seconds later, it was joined by the odd electrical buzzing sound that always accompanied it.

Xigbar, either not noticing the change or not caring either way about it, continued his taunting.

"Get up, dammit! I didn't even hit ya _that_ hard!"

Finally, Kisaki brought herself to her feet, though her arms dangled almost-limply at her sides and she seemed to be incapable of standing up straight. She coughed slightly, then began to raise one of her hands toward Xigbar as she turned her head.

Xigbar gasped, stepping back a bit at the sight of it. The girl's eyes, usually a bizarre silvery color, were glowing red. The buzzing sound became even louder than before, causing the elf's sensitive ears to ache slightly. Before he had a chance to complain, however, he was thrown across the room by a bolt of greenish energy that came flying from the palm of Kisaki's outstretched hand.

He flew almost the entire length of the training room before slowing down and crashing to the floor, sliding to a stop just short of the room's wall. He groaned in pain and mumbled something to himself for just a moment before passing out, his single yellow eye slipping shut.

* * *

"Xion..."

Once again, Roxas found himself in the strange room within his own mind where the little black-haired girl seemed to live. Oddly, the room seemed a bit different now than it had been before--it almost looked as if it had been cleaned more recently. Though the computer in the corner was still permanently shut down, the rest of the room seemed brighter and less dusty, and less junk was strewn across the floors and in the corners. Taking a quick glance at the bed, he could see that only a few old stuffed animals were hiding under it, rather than old socks and an army of dust bunnies.

Xion, once again wearing what appeared to be a school uniform, sat cross-legged on the floor in the middle of the room, in front of a small table. She looked up at Roxas and smiled, and he walked over to join her.

"I... never really got around to asking this before," he said, looking at Xion and then around at the room itself, "But... what _is_ this place?"

She giggled, reaching across the table with one hand and shoving him lightly.

"You mean you still haven't figured it out?"

He shook his head, glancing town at the small table in front of him. There were several small cups sitting there, though they were all empty.

"Roxas... this place," she said, glancing over at one of her bookshelves for a moment and then back to the boy. "The two islands outside, and most of the sea around them... this place is your _soul._"

When the spiky-haired boy only responded with an odd look, she continued.

"The islands outside... those are places from your memory," she said, pulling a piece of paper out from under the table and scribbling on it with a crayon. "And this room is from _my_ memory. Even though neither of us can remember them, they still feel familiar... because those memories are still part of us, just out of reach."

She drew a small diagram on the paper, then handed it to Roxas.

"See, this little guy is you," she said, pointing toward a crudely-drawn human shape with spiky hair similar to his own. "And this squiggly circle inside is your soul. The part of you that makes you _you._ All of your personality, memories, feelings... everything except what you look like, pretty much."

She then added a second squiggly circle, inside the first, and labeled it with a large black "X" before setting the crayon back down on the table.

"But you're different from most people," she continued, "Because your body doesn't just have one soul--one _person_--inside of it. I'm here, too. Ever since that day, when..."

Noticing that Xion was beginning to lower her head and stare down at the table while talking to him, Roxas reached over and placed one hand on her tiny shoulder.

"You... you don't have to talk about that day," he said, "It's in the past now. And... it was my fault you ended up this way, anyway."

She shook her head.

"No... it's because of my own mistakes that all those things happened. I didn't understand what was going on, and..."

Roxas smiled slightly.

"You kind of went crazy there for a while," he said, "But you're back now. You don't have to worry about what happened in the past."

Xion looked up at him again, smiling slightly as well.

"I'll figure out a way for you to have your own body again," Roxas said, standing up from the table. "Don't worry about it. If there's any way to fix things, I'll find it."

Xion stood as well, pulling Roxas back slightly when he began to walk toward the doorway.

"But what about the others?", she said, "The numbered members... Xemnas, Saix... and Vexen... in his reports on that project, he said he was planning to destroy me if anything went wrong... because I'm partially a Fangirl."

Roxas shook his head.

"No," he said, "Vexen never made any plans to get rid of you. The report you took when you ran off... it was the first draft, written way back when he started the project."

The look of worry slowly began to fade away from Xion's face, mostly replaced by confusion.

"You were asleep when Vexen and Xemnas found you. They didn't know that you'd be a normal person when you woke up--they thought you might turn into some mindless monster like the Fangirls."

He hugged her, the first time since that fateful day when they were forced to fight against each other.

"After you woke up and joined the Organization, and he got to see what you were really like... Vexen wouldn't even think of just getting rid of you like that. He's kind of a weird old guy sometimes, but he's really not all that bad."

Xion pulled herself closer to Roxas and closed her eyes, laying her head on his shoulder. For the first time in months, she didn't feel alone.

* * *

Xigbar's eye opened halfway, and the world around him seemed to be spinning. He groaned and quickly shut it again, waiting until he had regained his sense of balance before attempting to reopen it.

On one side of him was Kisaki, her eyes back to their usual color and a look of concern on her face. On the other, Lexaeus and Zexion stood, watching him as he struggled to open his eye and get up from the spot where he had landed. Once he had finally managed to sit up halfway and support himself with his arms, the largest of the three spoke.

"Are you alright?"

He scooted back slightly, sitting up straight and turning his head toward Lexaeus. He then rubbed his shoulder with one hand, wincing in pain.

"Yeah, yeah, I'm fine... nothin' I can't handle. Just caught me off guard, that's all."

The old elf glanced around to the three gathered around him, noticing that Zexion seemed to be holding back a smile.

"What're you smilin' about, Captain Scud?"

He pointed at Xigbar's chest with one hand, covering his mouth with the other to suppress a snicker.

"What? What's so damn funny?"

Kisaki looked down at the spot where Zexion pointed, and she too began to giggle quietly. Even Lexaeus began to smile, though he managed to hold it back a bit better than his two young comrades.

"I would suggest looking at your clothes, Xigbar."

He blinked, then looked at the large man as if he was insane for a moment before glancing down at his own chest. In place of the familiar black cloak of the Organization, he was wearing what appeared to be a sparkly purplish-black dress, only held onto his body by tiny straps.

Xigbar almost roared with anger as he jumped to his feet, somehow ignoring his injuries.

"What the hell? Seriously, _what the hell?!_"

He glanced around at the three standing around him, glaring at each one (though not so much at Lexaeus, as he realized that there was no way that the large man would even think of doing something this ridiculous.)

"What is this, a freakin' prom dress? Which one of you slipped this shit on me while I was out!? You'd better gimme back my goddamn cloak, or..."

Zexion stifled a laugh, then interrupted Xigbar before he could continue.

"I'm afraid that _is _your cloak. Kisaki's power affected it in some way when you were hit, and it transformed."

"Just like the stone from the walls did," Lexaeus added, glancing over toward the spot behind the bleachers where the hole used to be. "But this time, it was much more focused."

Xigbar growled, yanking at the dress's straps in an attempt to remove them. Of course, the old elf had never worn this particular article of clothing before, so he wasn't sure exactly _how_ to take it off.

"Okay... you'd better hope her little blast didn't do anything to my boxers, because I'm not gonna walk around in this shit any longer than I have to."

With that, he grabbed the purple fabric in both hands and pulled as hard as he could, tearing the whole thing almost in half. Kisaki gasped slightly, apparently a bit more aware of the dress's value than the three men... or, more likely, she was just shocked by Xigbar's sudden state of almost-nakedness.

Fortunately, however, his underwear was intact, so the most embarrassing thing anyone saw was the large collection of scars that were normally hidden beneath his uniform. Xigbar walked off toward the room's exit in nothing more than his boots and his boxers, grumbling the whole way about having to find a spare cloak.

* * *

Roxas climbed back up the side of the mountain, following a few feet behind Otonashi as the silver-haired man headed back up to the base with a rather large fish strapped across his back. Apparently he used his weapon for far more than just fighting--the whip-like part was able to extend, and he had tied the two ends together in order to make his fish-holder.

"So," the older man said, calling back toward Roxas without breaking his focus on the task of climbing upward. "Did you get anywhere with your meditation?"

He just nodded slightly in response, having a bit more trouble climbing up the rocks than Otonashi and not wanting to risk breaking his concentration and missing the next foothold.

"I could tell," he answered, stopping on a wide ledge and waiting for Roxas before continuing. "I'm not sure what you did, but _something_ happened. After about an hour, I got this weird feeling... like there was someone else down there on the rocks with me."

Roxas' eyes widened slightly.

"Really?"

Otonashi nodded, then adjusted his makeshift fish-strap to make sure it wasn't coming loose before heading further up the wall.

The boy paused for a moment on the ledge, taking a granola bar out of his cloak's pockets and munching on it a little. Suddenly, he heard Xion's voice in his head, sounding just as clear as she had before when they were in that strange room together.

_"Roxas... there's a Fangirl swarm coming."_

_"What?"_, Roxas replied, speaking to Xion through his thoughts. _"They're coming here!?"_

_"No," _Xion said, _"Not here... but close. I can hear the Fangirl Queen's voice commanding them... in just a few minutes, they're going to arrive on an island to the southwest of this one."_

Glancing up and noticing that Otonashi had nearly reached the top already, Roxas put his granola bar away and went back to climbing the rocks. The last thing he wanted right now was to be late getting back to the base again when a Fangirl swarm was on its way.

* * *

By the time both Roxas and Otonashi had made it back into the base, the sound of a Fangirl alarm going off was already echoing throughout the hallways. As they passed, some of the lazier members ran into other rooms and made themselves look busy in order to avoid being sent out to fight the Fangirls; others just walked by, figuring that Roxas--despite being a numbered member--wasn't very likely to recruit them for an extermination mission.

Before long, two sets of footsteps began to approach them from behind, quickly catching up. Roxas turned and glanced back, seeing Marluxia and Axel running down the hall.

"Hey," the boy said, waving slightly. "Where are you guys going?"

"We're taking the Dimensional Hippievan," Marluxia said, stopping to talk for a moment. "Didn't you hear that Fangirl alarm?"

"They heard it all right," Axel said, scratching his head slightly. "I mean, they came into this hallway right after it went off. No way they're _not_ gonna hear it."

There was a short pause, and then Roxas spoke up.

"I'm going on this one," he said, glancing up toward Marluxia. "It's been a while since I've had any missions... but I'm not hurt anymore, so it should be okay."

"Hmm..."

Axel walked ahead of Otonashi, then turned around and took a good look at the enormous fish strapped onto his back. He grinned, then walked back over toward Marluxia, nudging him slightly with his elbow.

"I think Otonashi here should go along with you guys," he said, "I'll just take that fish back to the kitchen instead. Wouldn't want you to have to lug it around on your back the whole time, y'know?"

Otonashi grabbed the handle of his weapon and untied the knot, causing the fish to slip free. Before it could hit the floor, the spiky-haired man had caught it with both hands, grunting and crouching down slightly when the weight of the scaly thing ended up being a bit more than he had expected. He then grinned and walked quickly back down the hallway, heading toward the Organization's kitchen.

The remaining three Organization members turned and headed in the other direction, picking up speed a bit to make up for the time they took talking and giving Axel something to fix for dinner. Before long, they had reached the Hippievan's launch tunnel, and Marluxia (being the only one allowed to drive the vehicle) hopped into the driver's seat. Once the others were in the van as well, the pink-haired man turned the key in the ignition, and everyone quickly put on their seatbelts before the Dimensional Hippievan began to rapidly accelerate.

Within a few seconds, the van flew out from the hole in the side of the mountain, filling the sky with a flash of energy for a moment before vanishing.

* * *

The van rolled to a stop in the middle of a flat, sandy area, dotted with patches of coastal grasses here and there. There was an old boardwalk nearby, looking as if it hadn't been repaired in several years; the wood was beginning to fall apart and rot away. They seemed to have arrived near a beach--in one direction, they could see the ocean quite clearly, and in another there was a large building of some sort with chain-link fences set up all around it.

Roxas slid open the van's side door and hopped out, glancing at the nearby building for a second before turning to face the beach behind him. He could see two small islands out past the waves, with a few hills and tropical plants growing up all around them. As he stared out across the ocean, his head began to ache slightly, and images flashed through his mind.

A man with brown, spiky hair watched as two little children ran around in the sand. The kids were playing with wooden swords, screaming out battle cries and striking at each other as if they were pirates or samurai in the middle of a serious battle.

The two kids held on for dear life as the small boat they were sitting in passed through the waves, bobbing up and down rapidly as the sea swelled and lowered beneath it. The older man was casually rowing, apparently not bothered by the waves at all. In a matter of minutes, they had reached a smaller island, and the kids immediately scrambled out onto the dock, glad to be back on dry land.

The two boys, now several years older, sat on the boardwalk along with a red-haired girl, all three eating slices of some kind of tropical fruit. An older boy, probably in his late teenage years, walked up behind them and crouched down slightly. He looked remarkably similar to the spiky-haired one, sitting between the red-haired girl and another boy with chin-length silver hair.

"Hey, Roxas... is something wrong?"

The strange visions left Roxas' mind, snapping him back to reality. Marluxia was standing behind him, tapping him on the shoulder in order to get his attention, while Otonashi stood several feet away with his back turned to them. The spiky-haired boy shook his head and turned around as well, beginning to walk away from the beach.

"Nah, I... I guess I just kinda blanked out there for a second."

"Glad to see you're back with us," the pink-haired man said, walking a few feet behind him as all three headed out away from the beach. "All three of us need to be in fighting shape for today's Fangirl swarm... Zagan said it looked like it was going to be a pretty big one."

Otonashi held out his hand and summoned his weapon without saying a word, causing the blade-tipped whip to appear in a flash of grayish energy with an odd metallic shine to it. Marluxia and Roxas followed suit, and the air was briefly filled with flashes of light and a flurry of pink flower petals.

Roxas glanced around as he continued to walk onward, finally speaking his mind after a few dozen steps.

"So, where are they?"

"Probably that building over there," Otonashi answered, pointing toward the large, fenced-in complex ahead of them. "Though I'm not sure exactly what it is... it hadn't been built yet the last time I was here."

The boy glanced over at him for a moment, wondering why Otonashi would have been to an abandoned island before, but then decided not to say anything.

"Seems like some kind of research facility," Marluxia said, taking a good look at the building ahead as he walked. "Not anything too high-security, though... those fences don't even have barbed-wire at the top."

"They've gotta have computers in a place like that," Roxas added, "The Fangirls probably came out of the Internet somewhere in there."

Marluxia nodded.

"Yes. The rest of this area has been abandoned for over a year... so that _would_ be the only place with any connection to the Internet."

They continued to walk toward the building, passing what appeared to be the foundations of houses that continued to stand even though the houses themselves were long gone. Occasionally they would spot some rotting wooden boards or shattered glass, or even stone steps leading up to doors that no longer existed--it was clear that there was once a town here, sometime in the recent past.

Eventually, they reached the chain-link fence that marked the border around the research center. Otonashi raised one hand, and the metal wire that made up the fence twisted apart, creating a roughly door-sized opening in the barrier and allowing the three Organization members to enter without causing any permanent damage.

Almost as soon as they had reached the building, the front door swung open and a terrified man in a labcoat came running out, screaming incoherently about girls attacking him. Following just a few yards behind was a group of a dozen Glomper Fangirls, arms outstretched and giggling as they chased after the helpless scientist.

"Well, there's our Fangirl swarm," Otonashi said, shifting into a battle stance. "Or part of it, anyway."

Roxas nodded, crossing his swords in front of him for a moment before swinging each one down and holding them out to either side.

"Let's clear 'em out before they leave the building."

Otonashi lashed out with his whip, narrowly missing the scientist and slashing three of the Glompers in the side. The first one stumbled and fell to the ground, where it was quickly trampled by the others around it; the other two shrieked in pain for a moment, but then continued their charge. Marluxia waited for the scientist to run past him, then held out one hand toward the Fangirls. Pinkish energy glowed around his fingers for a moment, and then the grass underneath the charging Glompers grew rapidly, flinging them backward into the wall of the building behind them.

"Is anyone else still in there?", the pink-haired man asked, turning to face the panicked scientist while Roxas and Otonashi ran forward to continue their attack. He nodded weakly, then wobbled for a second before passing out and falling to the ground.

After checking the man's pulse and determining that he was still alive, Marluxia stood and headed into the building. Roxas and Otonashi had both torn through the group of Glompers and made their way inside already; the sounds of weapons clashing against the metallic walls of the building (and slashing through the not-so-metallic bodies of Fangirls) echoed in from two different hallways. Occasionally, a green flash could be seen around a corner. Marluxia glanced around and listened for a few moments, then began to walk down the quieter of the two halls.

For a moment he glanced over through the large glass walls along the hallway, looking through into a lab of some sort. Tables and chairs were in disarray, as if everyone inside had rushed to escape when the Fangirls arrived. Computer screens on the tables that hadn't been overturned glowed dimly, showing plain-colored backgrounds with some text flashing across them. Looking past the lab and through the glass wall on the other side, Marluxia could see the other hallway, which seemed to be empty at the moment.

That is, until Roxas came into view, blocking a strike from a Fangirl's claws with both of his swords. When he countered with a swipe from his black-bladed katana, the creature ducked into a cardboard box to avoid the attack. Two more slashes came down, and the box was split into several chunks, revealing the Fangirl inside it. It lunged again, but was quickly sliced in half before it could reach its spiky-haired opponent.

_"Hmm," _Marluxia thought, _"Stalker Fangirls... it's been a while since I've seen many of those."_

Three more cardboard boxes slid into view, scooting along the floor behind Roxas as the first of the Fangirls flashed with green light and shattered. They all revealed themselves at once, then jumped at the boy's unguarded back before he could realize they were there.

"Arrgh!"

Roxas tumbled to the ground under the weight of the three Stalkers, struggling against them as he tried to push himself back up. He glanced back for a second and noticed something rather disturbing--the creatures appeared to be humping his legs while grinning evilly. Summoning up all of his strength, he stood up suddenly and threw the nasty little things off, lashing out with his swords as soon as his arms were free. One of the Fangirls lost its left arm, which dissolved into zeroes and ones as it fell to the ground.

Before he could see how Roxas dealt with the three Fangirls, sounds of boxes scooting across the floor around him got Marluxia's attention. A group of Stalker Fangirls had begun to approach him from both ends of the hallway, sliding across the shiny linoleum while hiding themselves inside their boxes. He calmly raised his scythe and waited for them to get close, pink energy flickering up around his weapon's blade occasionally.

Meanwhile, further along down the same hallway, Otonashi had his hands full with another group of Fangirls. A few Stalkers were present, but this group was mostly made up of Glompers and Flamers. The silver-haired man held up his hand and caused the metallic layer of the wall beside him to bend outward, catching a fireball and sending it flying back at the Flamer that had launched it. The creature barely managed to duck in time to avoid the attack, which singed some of its hair as it passed overhead.

"Who is this guy?", the Flamer growled angrily as it stood up. The other Flamers only grunted and mumbled before charging up fireballs of their own, though after a bit of random giggling one of the Glompers spoke up.

"He looks kinda like Riku," the creature said, the letters that made up its face shifting into a strange expression. "But he's too old!"

Otonashi gasped slightly, his whip-like weapon falling limp in mid-swing.

"Riku? Did you just say... Riku?"

The Fangirls just giggled (or grumbled, in the case of the not-so-giggly Flamers) before attacking once again. A barrage of fireballs smashed the folded section of the metal wall aside, allowing three Glompers to charge and leap forward. One of them latched onto Otonashi's chest, pushing him backward but not quite managing to knock him down. Ignoring this Fangirl, he instead swung his whip out and slashed the other two out of the air before they could get too close. Before he could prepare for another attack, another salvo of fireballs from the Flamers came flying at him, exploding upon impact and sending him flying backward into a wall.

Fortunately, the attached Glomper took the brunt of the blast for him, shattering into computer code as Otonashi shoved it aside and stood back up. The sleeves of his cloak had been completely burned off by the flames, but otherwise he was unharmed.

"Tell me," he said to the Fangirls, "How do you know Riku?"

Once again, they just giggled in response.

One of the Stalkers popped out of its box and held one of its clawed fingers to its lips (or rather, the part of its text-symbol face that was supposed to _look_ like lips), then giggled and replied.

"Soooorry," the creature said, its face shifting to an evil grin. "We're not telling!"

Before it could utter another word, the bladed tip of Otonashi's whip flew out and impaled its head, causing the Fangirl (box and all) to fall backward and shatter. Getting back into his battle stance, he slammed one hand palm-first onto the floor, causing metallic-gray energy to flare up and spread across the walls all throughout the hallway. The steel plating along the walls and ceiling twisted into giant metal spikes, thrusting down in all different directions to impale the group of Fangirls. Stalkers ducked into their boxes for protection, but they quickly discovered that cardboard doesn't hold up well against sharpened metal. A few Flamers hit the floor and rolled out of the way just in time to avoid the attack, but the rest were wiped out immediately, flooding the hall with greenish light.

Sweat rolled down Otonashi's forehead; he hadn't realized just how much of his power he had put into that attack. Usually he had enough control to only use however much was needed to do the job--Lexaeus had taught him well. But this time, it was a little different; the Fangirls were refusing to tell him what they knew about Riku. About his only son, who he thought had been dead for more than a year. Ever since that night, when his hometown was destroyed by the largest Fangirl swarm that had ever attacked Japan...

He narrowly dodged as another fireball came rushing at him, thanks to one of the surviving Flamers. Before he had a chance to counterattack, a blade of pink energy sliced through the metal spikes blocking the hall and decapitated the Fangirl before fading away into thin air.

"Marluxia?"

The pink-haired man appeared in the hallway ahead of him, pushing the chunks of metal out of his way with his scythe as he went. He then glanced over toward Otonashi and nodded slightly before swinging his weapon backward, destroying the last remaining Flamer before it could finish charging another fireball.

"The swarm seems to be retreating," he said, "After I cleared out the first few waves of Stalkers, the rest broke through the windows of that lab and disappeared back into the Internet."

Otonashi paused for a moment to catch his breath, then dematerialized his weapon and spoke.

"That's strange. The ones over here didn't seem to be interested in escaping..."

* * *

Roxas blocked three sets of Fangirl claws at once, only barely managing to force them back with both of his swords. After clearing out his side of the building's first floor, he had proceeded up the stairs to check for any more Fangirls--and, as it turned out, "more Fangirls" was a bit of an understatement. It seemed as if half of the swarm had relocated to a certain computer room on the second floor, pouring out at him incessantly from the moment he opened the door. A few times, he even saw new Fangirls appear from the room's computers.

_"It's like they're concentrating all of their forces on me,"_ he thought, slashing one of the Stalkers in half as he slowly backed away from the approaching swarm.

A Flamer Fangirl launched a burst of flames at him with both hands, but he dodged to the side, causing one of the computer lab's windows to melt and shatter as the flamethrower-like blast collided with it. He countered by flinging one of his twin swords at the creature, slicing through its chest before spinning back like a boomerang.

_"But why me? If they wanted to all gang up on the toughest guy here, they should be going after Marluxia..."_

Several Glompers jumped through the broken window, grabbing at Roxas with their overly-long arms before being sliced apart by a series of rapid slashes.

_"And if they wanted to take out the weakest first, Otonashi should be the one dealing with this mess. What's going on here?"_

In the hall behind him, a door leading to an office suddenly flew off its hinges, and a group of Flamers rushed out from it. The Fangirls now had him surrounded--most of the swarm was coming from the computer room, but a quick glance down the hallway told Roxas that the computers in each of the offices were also being used as entrance points now.

While Roxas was distracted for a moment, one of the Glompers in the hall in front of him managed to tackle him, knocking him to the ground. He felt his energy begin to drain from his body as the Fangirl's grip tightened, but before it could stay on for too long, he wrenched one of his arms free and jabbed the creature in the side, causing it to shriek and jump away from him. He stood up again and finished it off with another slash before turning and lashing out at two Flamers behind him, causing all three of the Fangirls to glow green and shatter before they even touched the floor.

A dozen fireballs from the Flamer Fangirls on both sides of the hallway rocketed past him, some of them coming so close to hitting him that they burned small holes in the fabric of his cloak as they passed. He swung his two swords as fast as he could to deflect another barrage of flames, but he wasn't quite quick enough, and one fireball from each side managed to hit him.

Roxas screamed in pain as the heat and force of the explosions pummeled him from both sides, burning away most of his cloak and leaving him wearing little more than the black pants, gloves, and boots of his uniform. Even the shirt underneath his cloak was mostly shredded, reduced to a few strips of half-scorched white cloth that hung limply from his body. He was still standing, but it was becoming considerably more difficult by the second.

He gritted his teeth and stood back up, quietly talking to himself as he prepared for the next attack.

"This is ridiculous... these aren't even very powerful Fangirls," he mumbled, slicing a Glomper into pieces with a couple of quick slashes. "Nothing like that one from the last swarm. But there's... just too many of them..."

As he paused to take a breath between deflecting more fireballs and slicing the nearest Stalker Fangirl in two, a familiar voice popped into his head.

_"Roxas..."_

His eyes widened slightly, and he glanced around the hallway, seeing nothing but the usual Fangirls.

"Xion!? Is that you?"

_"Roxas... you shouldn't need to look around like that. I exist within you, remember?"_, she answered, pausing for a few seconds so that the spiky-haired boy could fight off a few more Glompers before continuing.

_"This swarm might be too much for you to handle alone... but with both of us fighting together, those Fangirls don't stand a chance."_

_"What do you mean?"_, he asked, not speaking aloud this time. _"How can _we_ fight them if you're still stuck inside me?"_

_"Just keep on fighting, Roxas,"_ she answered, _"You'll see what I mean."_

* * *

Marluxia and Otonashi rushed up the nearest staircase as the sound of an explosion from the second floor reached their ears. As far as they could tell, this facility wasn't used for anything related to explosives, or even chemicals that might combine to make something explosive--so the Fangirls had to be responsible.

The silver-haired man turned toward his comrade and re-summoned his weapon, then asked a quick question.

"I thought you said the swarm retreated?"

"I thought it _had,_" Marluxia answered. "The Fangirls left alive in my section of the building all jumped into the computer screens and returned to the Internet... it certainly _looked_ like they were leaving."

They reached the top of the stairwell and glanced down the hallway, noticing a large group of Flamers firing off their attacks toward someone else even further down. At first glance, it was hard to make out who this person was, but after running a few yards down the hall, it became clear that it was Roxas--albeit burned and bare-chested. His cloak was nowhere to be seen; Marluxia correctly assumed that it must have been destroyed by the Fangirls rather than simply tossed aside.

For just a moment, Marluxia's calm was broken and his eyes widened slightly.

"Is that... the _entire_swarm attacking Roxas, all at once?"

"Sure looks that way," Otonashi answered, leaning against one of the walls and breathing heavily. He was still worn out from his final attack against his own group of Fangirls, and running up the stairs certainly hadn't helped his condition much.

A few moments passed, and the two men watched as several Glompers jumped toward Roxas only to be sliced in two and thrown aside by one slash from each of his twin katanas. Then, suddenly, a look of realization crossed Marluxia's face.

"I remember now," he said, "During Vexen's experiment a few days ago, Xion warned us that the Fangirls had some special interest in Roxas... they must be trying to capture him."

Otonashi shivered slightly, immediately remembering that the Fangirls he fought had mentioned his son. They may have been after Roxas now, but could Riku have been one of their earlier victims? He didn't want to think about the possibilities of such a thing.

"We can't let that happen," he said, taking a few steps down the hallway before pausing to catch his breath again.

"You're not in any shape to be fighting that kind of a swarm on your own," Marluxia said, holding his scythe out across the hall to block the silver-haired man's path. "I'll handle this."

Marluxia raised his scythe and then ran down the hall, slicing a row of Flamers in two with a single swing. He then swung again, letting loose a blade of pinkish energy that flew through the air and cleaved a Glomper in half before narrowly missing a group of Stalkers that ducked into their boxes just in time to avoid being decapitated. Before he could go any further down the hall, however, something unexpected happened.

Roxas, who had been knocked down by the Fangirls the last time Marluxia had looked, was now standing again... and his usual weapons had been replaced by two hook-tipped swords, just like Xion's.

The boy swung his twin blades down and let loose a powerful battle cry. For just a moment, it sounded as if two completely-different voices were both coming from his mouth, adding even more of an echo effect as the sound reverberated throughout the hall. A pale aura of light surrounded his weapons before spreading over his entire body, illuminating the hall with a dim, yellowish glow. Fangirls of all types flinched away from the light for a second before shaking it off and resuming their attack.

Marluxia could only watch as the spiky-haired boy charged directly into the swarm, slicing away at the Fangirls with speed that even a fully-healed Roxas couldn't hope to match. The aura around his weapons began to glow brighter as he cut down three Glompers before they even had a chance to lunge at him; when a Flamer threw its fireball toward him, a beam of light leapt out from the black blade and caused the orb of flame to explode in midair, raining sparks down on the Fangirls.

Otonashi caught up with the pink-haired man, finally able to breathe normally. The scene he saw unfolding down the hall nearly took his breath away once again; Roxas was somehow wielding Xion's weapons, and on top of that, he was using his light-based powers with a much greater level of skill than he had ever shown before. Instead of struggling against the sheer numbers of the Fangirl swarm, he was effortlessly wiping them out.

"What... what _is_ this?"

"I'm not sure myself," Marluxia said, staring onward as the boy slammed his swords into the floor and vaporized a dozen Fangirls with a pillar of light. "I didn't see it up close, so I'm not completely sure... but just based on what Lexaeus told me, this seems a lot like that surge of power Roxas had during his last Fangirl extermination mission."

"But that didn't happen until he was on the brink of death," Otonashi said, "He was still up and fighting this time."

Marluxia dematerialized his scythe and placed his hand on his chin, just watching as Roxas fired a spinning beam of light from both of his swords that drilled through twenty Fangirls before finally running out of power.

"I can't say for sure... but by the looks of it, I'm guessing that Roxas found this new power during his meditation training."

Otonashi turned toward him, looking a bit confused.

"What do you mean?"

"I'm probably not allowed to tell you this, since you weren't involved with Vexen's project... but I suppose since you've seen Roxas fighting this way, it won't hurt to explain the situation."

Roxas jumped and spun around with both swords held outward, decapitating several Fangirls at once. He then raised his blades and lunged forward in midair, impaling a Stalker before it had a chance to jump at him.

"Xion still exists within Roxas," the pink-haired man said, "Her soul has been inside him ever since their fight, when her body was destroyed and she appeared to die. His power surge while fighting that Fangirl the last time was a result of Xion taking over his body in order to protect him."

The spiky-haired boy landed in the middle of a group of Flamers, dodging their attacks as they all fired on him simultaneously. When the panicked Fangirls jumped and ran around in an attempt to dodge their own poorly-aimed blasts, Roxas swooped in and destroyed them all with a powerful double-slash with both of his hook-swords.

"So," Otonashi said, "What Roxas learned during his meditation training... it wasn't how to keep himself calm in battle, or even how to better control his powers..."

A dozen Glompers all jumped at Roxas at once, only to be disintegrated when four pillars of white light erupted from the floor around the boy and spiraled outwards into them.

"What he learned... was how to communicate with Xion."

Marluxia nodded.

"Exactly. This new power that Roxas is using right now... it isn't just _his _power, or even Xion's power. It's both of them, working together."

With a flash of light so bright that both Marluxia and Otonashi had to cover their eyes, a handful of Fangirls standing around Roxas were thrown backward and shattered upon impact with the walls and floor. The ones that were left suddenly froze up and began backing away; the boy just stood still and breathed heavily, holding his two swords at the ready as he watched the few Fangirls that survived beginning to retreat.

Within a matter of seconds, they had all jumped into the screen of one of the nearby lab's computers, disappearing back into the depths of the Internet from whence they came. Roxas' twin swords glowed for a moment before returning to their normal shape and then dematerializing entirely, and he slumped to the floor, catching himself with his hands just soon enough to avoid falling flat on his face.

* * *

The Dimensional Hippievan rolled to a stop back at the end of its launch tunnel, and Marluxia climbed out of the driver's seat. He was followed shortly afterward by Otonashi, who slid open the side door for Roxas so that the exhausted boy wouldn't have to bother with it.

Ever since the last Fangirls had retreated, Roxas had seemed like he was about to fall asleep on his feet; at times, he was barely able to stand. He certainly wasn't in any shape to fight anymore--which was to be expected, since he had just taken on a whole swarm by himself.

"Roxas," Marluxia asked, glancing down at the boy, "Are you still doing okay?"

"Yeah... I guess so," he answered, shrugging slightly. "I'm just... really tired, that's all. Fighting off all those Fangirls really took a lot out of me."

The three returning warriors headed out into the stone hallways of the Organization's base, walking away from the Hippievan's tunnel and toward the stairs. Before heading down one of the staircases, Otonashi turned toward Roxas and spoke.

"You should probably get some sleep," he said, "Your injuries don't look that bad, mostly just some minor burns and scratches... but you're worn out. Nobody's going to mind if you turn in for the night a little earlier than usual."

The boy nodded sleepily, barely able to keep himself on his feet. He then mumbled something that neither of the two men could hear and headed up the stairs, toward the location of the numbered members' quarters.

By the time he had arrived at his room, he had nearly tripped over his own feet several times. His limbs felt heavy, as if all the energy he had was drained out from them; it reminded him of the feeling he had after being attacked by Glomper Fangirls, but to a much greater degree. He slowly opened his door and walked over to the bed, collapsing onto it in a heap without even bothering to change out of what was left of his uniform first.

Before he could fall asleep, however, a familiar voice once again popped into his head.

_"Roxas... I'm sorry."_

For a second, he just laid there quietly, thinking that he must be dreaming already. He then recognized the voice as Xion's, shook himself awake, and answered.

_"Sorry? About what? If it wasn't for your help, I wouldn't have had a chance against all those Fangirls."_

_"Yes, but... this is my fault, too. The reason you're so tired now... it's because I had to use almost all of your extra energy in that fight."_

She paused for a moment, then explained further.

_"I don't have much strength of my own left... so to add my powers to your own, I needed to draw on more of your strength instead. I... I think I might have used a little too much..."_

Roxas smiled slightly; he was already beginning to drift off into unconsciousness, though he was able to manage one last sentence before he was completely asleep.

_"Don't worry about it, Xion..."_


	14. Unlucky Thirteen

**CHAPTER 13**  
_~ Unlucky Thirteen ~_

_"Roxas... wake up..."_

In his bed, Roxas tossed and turned, unable to settle into a restful sleep despite being so tired he could barely stand. Once again, the voice in his head called out to him, attempting to stir him awake.

_"Fangirls... in the base..."_

Roxas' eyes suddenly popped open, and he sat up in his bed faster than he thought he would've been able to in his condition. Looking around at his room, he saw that it looked exactly how it did when he had went to sleep--nothing out of the ordinary, and most importantly, no Fangirls in sight.

"Whew," the spiky-haired boy sighed, wiping some sweat from his forehead and brushing a few strands of his hair out of the way. "Just another bad dream..."

_"Roxas! Wake up!"_

For a second, he glanced around the room again, not quite awake enough to figure out what was going on. He then groaned slightly as he realized whose voice he was hearing. Roxas paused and closed his eyes, attempting to focus enough to communicate with Xion despite his groggy state.

_"Xion? What's going on?"_

_"Didn't you hear me before?"_, she asked, _"Fangirls have somehow gotten into the base... I can sense them."_

Roxas threw his sheets aside and stepped out of his bed, stretching his arms slightly in an attempt to stay awake.

_"What? Fangirls in the base... but wouldn't that set off a Fangirl alarm?"_

_"Yes... normally, it would. I'm not sure what's stopping the Fangirl alarm from going off... but I can definitely sense the presence of Fangirls."_

He reached up to remove his cloak from its hanger on his wall, then remembered that it had been destroyed in his last battle with the Fangirls. Grumbling slightly, he dug an old T-shirt out of a dresser and threw it on before heading out through the door.

_"Xion... those Fangirls that got into the base. Where are they right now?"_

There was a short pause, and then the girl's voice answered.

_"I... I think there somewhere near the main entrance,"_ she said, _"But... that doesn't make any sense. The main entrance only opens from the inside... how could they get in that way?"_

A flash of light briefly illuminated the hallway as Roxas began to run, summoning his twin swords without stopping.

"Guess there's not much chance that someone just slipped up and left the door open," the spiky-haired boy mumbled to himself, snapped fully awake by the thought of the only possibility left that could explain the situation. "Someone on the inside... a member of the Organization... must have let them in."

* * *

At the main entrance to the Organization's base, a small group of Fangirls sat cross-legged on the floor, fidgeting around out of boredom. A Stalker Fangirl, sitting in its cardboard box, used its clawed hands to scribble vaguely-humanoid shapes in the dust and mud covering the floor. Several Glompers yawned loudly and glanced around the room. Apparently, they were waiting for something.

"Hey, boss," one of the Glompers blurted out, turning toward a cloaked figure standing up against a nearby wall. "When is Roxy gonna get here?"

The man standing against the wall chuckled slightly. He was fairly tall, and wore the black cloak of the Organization; his features were completely obscured by the shadow of his hood, compounded even further by the fact that it was very late and there was almost no light coming into the base from the outside.

"Don't worry, he'll be here. That little voice in his head's bound to have picked up on us by now... and Roxas isn't the type to just sit back and do nothing if he feels like he's the only one who knows that something suspicious is going on."

Leaning back up against the wall again, he turned toward the Glomper that had spoken up and added one more than before returning to total silence.

"And by the way... you really don't have to call me 'boss.' I'm just another humble servant of the Fangirl Queen."

A few minutes passed before the sound of footsteps began to echo from the hallways leading up to the base's entrance. The bored Fangirls suddenly jolted upright and turned their heads in the direction of the sound, abandoning the pointless little things they had been doing to pass the time and preparing for battle.

Once again the cloaked man chuckled, whispering to himself before backing away even further from the Fangirls so that his form became nearly invisible against the backdrop of the dark room.

"And here he is..."

As Roxas charged into the room, he slowed down slightly and held out one of his twin blades. An aura of light surged up around his arm, flickering slightly as if it was about to run out of power; the light spread until it had surrounded the white-bladed katana, illuminating a small area of the room and revealing the Fangirls.

It was clear that the spiky-haired boy wasn't quite recovered from his last fight; instead of easily knocking the Glompers out of the air as they jumped toward him, he had to roll out of the way at the last second to avoid them, only countering after he was back on his feet. Two Glompers were quickly cut in half, but the third managed to jump back in time to avoid Roxas' blows. The lone Stalker scooted up behind the boy in its cardboard box, but even a half-asleep Roxas was alert enough to notice the annoying scraping noise that the box made as it went; before the Fangirl could even attempt to reach out for him with its claws, he swung one of his swords backward and decapitated the creature with a single slash.

Within a few minutes, all of the Fangirls were destroyed, and greenish light filled the room. For the first time, Roxas noticed the cloaked figure standing up against the wall and watching the battle unfold.

"You," he said, raising one of his swords toward the hooded man, "You're the one who opened the gate and let those Fangirls in... but why?"

He stepped away from the wall and unfolded his arms, slowly walking toward Roxas. The boy readied both of his swords in preparation for battle, surrounding both of them with light in an attempt to illuminate the room enough to get a glimpse of the face beneath the mysterious man's hood.

"Why? Hmm, I guess that's a good question," he said, continuing to slowly approach Roxas. "But it's late, and I don't feel like explaining it right now... I think I'll just let you figure it out on your own."

Roxas lunged forward and swiped at the mystery man with one of his swords, but his opponent saw this attack coming a mile away; he easily dodged, leaping into the air and landing a few feet behind the boy's back. He turned and tried to attack again, but this time his swing was interrupted by a sudden kick to the chest that sent him stumbling back and nearly falling over.

"Hmm... looks like you've still got some energy left in you after all."

He held up one hand, causing a dull orange energy to flicker up around his fingers as he flexed each one slightly.

"And that's without even half a night's sleep... you really _do_ bounce back from things faster than the rest of us."

Roxas' mind raced, attempting to figure out the hooded man's identity. He knew he had heard the voice somewhere before, and the manner of speaking seemed very familiar as well... but in his current state, he could barely even keep himself on his feet, let alone remember things about someone without even so much as a glance at their face to help jog his memory.

"Who are you!?", the boy yelled, taking another swipe at him with both of his swords after pulling himself back to his feet. As expected, he didn't get an answer--the man's only response was a short laugh.

The cloaked man backed away from Roxas slightly to avoid another sluggish blow, then pointed one finger toward him. The orange energy flared up for a second, then launched outward, solidifying into what appeared to be some sort of rope as it flew through the air. Roxas slashed away at the rope over and over, but every time he sliced through it, it split into several smaller ropes and continued to reach out toward him.

Eventually, the boy's strength began to give out, and he was no longer able to swing his swords with enough force to saw through the hooded man's ropes. The split rope now looked more like a network of roots, branching out in all directions; on impact, the smaller sections of rope whipped around Roxas' body and lashed his arms and legs into place while the larger strand behind them forced him backward against the wall.

"Huh... that's all? Maybe you didn't have quite as much energy as I thought," the cloaked man said, walking up to Roxas and bending down slightly to get a good look. He grabbed the boy's chin with one gloved hand and lifted it, giving him a clear view of Roxas' face.

"Yeah... now that I've had a closer look, I'd say you've been so tired you were about to drop throughout the whole fight. Those dark circles under your eyes are a dead giveaway."

He paced away from the boy for a few seconds, apparently no longer considering him a threat now that he was tied down and pinned against the wall by the strange ropes.

"Roots," Roxas mumbled weakly, gazing down at the series of ropes that held him in place. "The ropes... are roots..."

The cloaked man turned and paced back toward Roxas, listening carefully to every word the boy said.

"Are you... Marluxia?"

Roxas glanced down at the root-like growth wrapped around his body once again, noticing that they didn't look quite like the roots he was used to seeing. On closer inspection, they didn't look like plant roots at all--they were too rubbery, and not the right color for any kind of plant he had ever seen.

"No, wait... these aren't plants..."

The mystery man laughed.

"Very observant... for someone who can barely keep his eyes open, anyway. But you're right, those ropes aren't plant-based at all... they're made of fungus."

The boy's eyes widened; if he hadn't been falling asleep on his feet, he probably would have gasped as well. He immediately knew who the cloaked man was.

"Fungus powers... you're--"

Before Roxas could speak the man's name, he waved one hand in front of the boy, leaving a trail of dull yellowish-orange energy in the air behind it. The energy condensed into a cloud of tiny spores before flying into Roxas' face, and almost immediately he began to slip away into unconsciousness...

* * *

Axel walked up the stairs toward the numbered members' quarters, looking around for any sign of Roxas. Nobody had seen him the whole morning, but since he had passed out after his last Fangirl-extermination mission, that wasn't much of a surprise--no one really expected the kid to be up and ready to go at the crack of dawn after wearing himself out like that, after all. When he didn't show up for breakfast, however, his absence began to look a bit more suspicious. By ten o'clock that morning, when Roxas was supposed to meet Marluxia and Xaldin for another session of meditation training, it was clear that something was up.

"'Ey, Roxas? You still in bed?", the spiky-haired man called down the hallway as he came around the corner. "I mean, I know that Fangirl swarm wore you out and all, but sleeping for sixteen hours straight? Even I don't sleep _that_ long."

Noticing that Roxas' door was open, he paused in the middle of the hallway, expecting to see the boy shuffle out of the room at any minute. Instead, he heard two more sets of footsteps coming up behind him--Xaldin and Marluxia, apparently looking for Roxas as well.

"Huh?", he said, turning around, "What're you guys doing up here?"

"C'mon," Xaldin said, crossing his arms. "Isn't it obvious? Roxas never showed up for his training, and we've already looked everywhere else the kid hangs out."

Marluxia nodded.

"Hmm... well, I was just about to check his room," Axel said, pointing back to the open door. "But I don't think he's in there, either. The door's been hanging open like that the whole time I've been here."

The three walked over to the boy's room, Axel peeking in first. The sheets were thrown off of Roxas' bed like he had gotten up and left in a hurry, and one of his dresser drawers--full of old T-shirts--was left hanging open. There were no signs of a struggle; just the usual messy room that was to be expected when you were dealing with a fifteen-year-old.

"Nope," Axel muttered, turning back to the other two men. "Not a trace of him in there, either."

Marluxia looked up suddenly, as if getting an idea.

"A trace... that's it," he said, "Get Zexion up here as soon as possible. If there's any trace of Roxas' presence left, he should at least be able to figure out how long he's been gone."

* * *

The news of Roxas' disappearance quickly spread throughout the entire Organization. Though numbered members had the right to come and go from the base freely at any time when they weren't busy with their duties, Roxas was not known to travel very far outside the mountain's walls on his own, especially not so early in the morning. Most suspicious of all was the fact that he hadn't told anyone that he was leaving the base, or even left a note; the few times that Roxas did go off on his own, he would always let someone else know first.

Xemnas, apparently believing that he may have run away like Xion had months ago, had ordered an inventory of all the Organization's supplies; this search, however, came up empty. Nothing was missing, not even food or money--if Roxas had indeed run away, he had done it without any planning or preparation beforehand.

Zexion's search of the boy's room came up with a bit more information--Roxas had left the room hours ago, at around one o'clock in the morning. Tracking the boy's scent became difficult after that point, but it was clear that he was headed off somewhere in a hurry; he hadn't even taken the time to stop by the storage room containing spare cloaks before he left, instead taking off with nothing more than his uniform's black pants and an old T-shirt.

"I think we can rule out a repeat of the Xion incident," the blue-haired man said, brushing a stray strand of hair away from his left eye before continuing. "In addition to the fact that no supplies disappeared along with him, Roxas wouldn't have been in any condition to run away last night... so it's time to consider the other options."

Axel scratched his head.

"_What_ other options? Kids don't just vanish into thin air," he said, waving his hands around a bit for emphasis. "And there's _no way _he could've been kidnapped... if someone from outside tried to get in last night, every alarm in the base would've gone off."

Zexion sighed and summoned his book, flipping through the pages quietly for a few moments before suddenly stopping and turning the heavy tome so that the spiky-haired man could read it.

"In case you've forgotten," he said, "A kidnapping wouldn't necessarily have to involve someone from outside. We've suspected that there may be a traitor at work ever since we noticed certain files missing from the Fangirl Detection System... it's entirely possible that whoever deleted those files is responsible for this as well."

Marluxia put his hand on his chin, looking as if thinking hard about something. After a few moments, he spoke up.

"But every other member was present this morning," he said, "If someone from within the Organization took him somewhere else, how could they make it back here so quickly?"

Zexion almost closed his book, then quickly reopened it after pausing for a moment. He searched through his notes, eventually stopping at an older-looking page.

"Good point. If the Dimensional Hippievan launched last night, we would have all heard it... so wherever Roxas was taken, it can't be much more than a few hours' walking distance from here."

He flipped past a few more pages, reading over his old notes carefully, then continued before anyone else could get a word in.

"Axel, gather a search party," the shortest of the men said, clapping his book shut as he spoke. "But tell every member originating from Japan to stay put. As it seems likely that Roxas is being held somewhere on this island, those who know the area are to be considered suspects until further notice."

"Sheesh, that's a little harsh," the redhead said, scratching his head nervously. "But I guess there's not much choice until we get a real lead on this thing..."

* * *

Naminé sat quietly in her chair in front of the massive Fangirl Detection System computers, glancing up at the screens occasionally but mostly focusing her attentions on the sketchpad sitting on her lap. She was drawing a rather unusual scene: Zagan, slumped over the keyboard, a bubble of drool forming in the corner of his mouth as he snored.

A quick glance to her left confirmed that this picture wasn't just a silly thought that had popped into her head during the slow early-morning hours. Zagan, usually alert and totally focused on his task of monitoring the computers for any sign of Fangirl activity, had fallen asleep on the job. It was a rare sight indeed, and the little girl couldn't resist the opportunity to preserve the image of it in paper form.

Just as she had finished the last few details of the man's reflective glasses and short, stubbly beard, the door to the room swung open and Zexion rushed in. He paused for a moment to gaze over at Zagan, shaking his head slightly at the rather disgraceful sight, and then turned to Naminé instead.

"Naminé," he said, "I'm sure you've already heard the news... Roxas has gone missing, and it's suspected that it was a kidnapping."

The girl nodded slightly, a sad look crossing her face.

"I would normally ask Zagan, but as he's... occupied at the moment, I'm asking you instead," Zexion continued. "If Roxas has regained consciousness by now, the Fangirl Detection System should be able to detect his presence. I'd like you to scan this island for any sign of Roxas... and if that search comes up empty, expand the search to all of Japan."

Once again Naminé nodded, turning back toward the computer monitors and slowly typing in a series of commands. A map popped up on the screen, displaying the entirety of the island the base was located on. Within a few minutes, the scan was finished; unfortunately, it had not detected Roxas anywhere. Naminé paused for a moment, then began typing a bit faster than before, adjusting the scan to cover all of the Japanese islands.

The computer beeped slightly, and the map on the screen zoomed out to show the entire country of Japan as well as some of the surrounding ocean. Before the scan could get very far, however, a thunderous snore erupted from the other side of the room, followed by a loud _crash._

Zexion and Naminé knew what had happened, of course, but the sudden sound made them turn their heads in that direction anyway. Zagan had slipped out of his chair, nearly knocking the keyboard down in the process as he went crashing down to the floor. Though the sounds of people talking and computers beeping had not been enough to wake him up, his sudden impact with the stone floor had done the job nicely.

"Finally awake, I see," the blue-haired man said, staring down with mild annoyance at the spot on the floor where the other man had ended up.

Zagan grumbled under his breath as he pulled himself up off the floor, then shrugged and laughed slightly.

"Yeah... had a hard time sleeping last night," he said, adjusting his shiny glasses so that they covered his eyes completely and then scratching his head for a few moments. "A bad case of gas'll do that, y'know. Must've been something I ate..."

Zexion glanced back at the computer screen for a second. The Fangirl Detection System had covered nearly a third of Japan already, with no luck.

"So," he said, turning back to Zagan, "I assume you've already heard the news?"

"News? That's news to me. Last time I checked, we hadn't even had a minor Fangirl alarm all morning."

Zagan stretched, causing a few bones to crack and pop, and then yawned.

"Of course," he continued, "I _have _been asleep since just after breakfast, so I guess I could've missed something."

Zexion sighed, then took another look at the computer.

"Lexaeus was right," he said, "You _can_ tell exactly who trained the non-numbered members just by watching how they act. You're being even more like Axel than usual this morning."

The computer beeped for a split-second, catching Zexion's attention once again. However, it was unfortunately not Roxas' presence that the machine had picked up on--instead, it was a lone Fangirl wandering in one of Japan's many cities. Based on the strength of the signal, it was probably someone who had only very recently transformed, and who had not yet fully connected with the hivemind. Once he was absolutely sure that this was the only thing the computer had found, he turned back toward Zagan and continued.

"But, like I was about to say... Roxas went missing at some point during the night, and all signs point toward a kidnapping," Zexion said, flipping through his notes to make sure he didn't forget to mention anything important. "Since the Dimensional Hippievan was not used, it's likely that the kidnapper has Roxas held captive somewhere nearby... Axel should be gathering a search party to comb the area as we speak."

"Hmm," Zagan replied, scratching his beard with one hand while staring at the computer screen. "A kidnapping, huh? Whoever pulled that off must've been pretty careful about it, because I know I didn't hear any alarms going off last night."

"Yes," Zexion said, "That brings me to the other major point... we believe that this kidnapping was the work of someone _inside_ the Organization. Only one of our members could know the security system well enough to manage something like this."

The computer let out another weak beep, once again picking up a lone Fangirl wandering across the city. Zexion didn't even bother looking at the screen this time; he could tell just by the sound that it was only another weak Fangirl signal, nothing like what the machine would pick up if it had found Roxas.

"So... you guys have any suspects yet?"

"Unfortunately, no," the blue-haired man answered. "Though we are keeping the Japanese members out of the search parties for now just in case, we have no real reason to believe that any of them is responsible... whoever did this covered their tracks _very_ well."

* * *

Slowly, Roxas began to awaken. The first thing he noticed was that his entire body was sore, most likely a result of the Fangirl-extermination mission the day before. He then realized that he was not lying down; instead, he was hanging on a wall, his arms and legs shackled against it by some sort of rubbery but extremely strong substance. He opened his eyes and immediately shut them again--he was in a room of pure white, and every surface seemed to pulse with a strange, unfamiliar light.

After a few more minutes, he tried again, letting his eyes adjust to the light rather than immediately shutting them again. He looked around the strange room he found himself in, noticing that it appeared to be perfectly round aside from the flat surface of the floor. Other than the rubbery shackles that held him against the wall, the room was completely empty.

Until, that is, a rectangular hole opened up on one side of the sphere.

A shadow began to creep into the room for a few seconds before Roxas got a glimpse of its owner--a strange Fangirl, unlike any he had heard of before. Of all the Fangirls he had seen, its closest resemblance was to the one that had nearly killed him on his first real extermination mission--it was taller than most of its kind, with features closer to a humanoid female rather than the usual cartoonish, long-armed, flat-chested monsters. This one, however, appeared even more humanoid than the mutant that had appeared in the convention center--while that one had looked like a modified Yaoinator Fangirl, the creature that stood in the round room with him now was something entirely different. The Fangirl glanced over toward him for a moment, giggled slightly, and then immediately turned around and left through the same door-like opening that it had appeared from.

"Hey! Come back here! Let me down!"

No matter how loud the boy yelled, he wasn't able to get the Fangirl's attention. It continued to walk away from the spherical room, the door vanishing behind it and leaving Roxas alone in his white prison once again.

That is, until _something else _began to enter the room. Instead of coming in through a door, it seemed to slowly assemble itself in the room's center, bit by bit, like an image on a computer screen being constructed one pixel at a time. Finally, the enormous, tentacled monster was fully formed, and the air in the room seemed to crackle with energy just from the thing's presence. In a few spots, the air actually appeared to be twisting around in on itself, reminding Roxas of the ripples left behind by Xigbar's space-manipulating powers.

For a few moments, only the strange crackling noises filled the air; then, finally, a familiar voice popped into Roxas' head.

_"Roxas,"_ Xion whispered, her voice beginning to distort slightly as she spoke. _"This is... the Fangirl Queen."_


	15. The Week Without Roxas

**CHAPTER 14**  
_~ The Week Without Roxas ~_

Zexion sighed, carefully lifting a small cup of tea and taking a sip before returning it to its previous position. He sat at a table in the Organization's cafeteria, along with several other members; looking around at the various faces at the table, it was easy to see that Roxas' disappearance had them all in a pretty awful mood.

"It's been a week," an unusual, robotic-sounding voice spoke up, "Have the search parties uncovered any new information about the kidnapping?"

The blue-haired man glanced across the table toward the source of the voice-a tall, thin man whose face was completely covered by a white mask bearing the symbol of the Organization.

"Unfortunately... we haven't," he said, taking another sip of tea in between words. "We've searched the entirety of Japan, and yet we still haven't seen or heard anything that might help us figure out where Roxas is being held."

The masked man nodded silently, then went back to flipping through the book he had been reading before. The others at the table continued to munch away at their food without much enthusiasm-_-_apparently, the fact that someone could kidnap one of their fellow members right out from underneath their noses was enough to prevent them from even enjoying their meals.

"However... the investigation here at the base has uncovered several key points," Zexion continued. "We've determined that something awakened Roxas early in the morning, and whatever this event was, it was enough of a disturbance to lure the boy toward the main entrance but not enough to wake up anyone else. We suspect that the actual kidnapping occured somewhere close to the entrance, though how the perpetrator managed to escape with Roxas without leaving any trace of their presence is still a mystery."

"Yes," Lexaeus said, sitting down in one of the empty chairs and placing a large plate of salad onto the table. "Whoever did this somehow cleared away even the smallest traces of residual energy from the entrance area... but so far we have no idea how anyone could have accomplished this."

The masked man with the robotic voice suddenly turned and faced the newcomer, apparently thinking of something.

"Could it be that the kidnapper used some sort of biological agent to absorb and break down all traces of their energy signatures?"

He set his book down on the table, then held out one hand. A yellowish-green glow surrounded his fingers for a moment before condensing into the shape of a small, roach-like insect with long antennae.

"For example... this cockroach I have just created is only a temporary existence, not truly alive. In order to sustain itself, it consumes small amounts of energy from the air."

The creature twitched its antennae slightly before its creator closed his hand around it, and in a flash of energy it was gone.

"If the kidnapper possessed a power similar to mine, or any power that gave him the ability to draw in energy hanging in the air... he could have used that power to eliminate any traces of his own presence."

"Hmm," Lexaeus said, nibbling a bit of lettuce from his salad. "It's possible."

"That would certainly explain the lack of _any_ energy traces in the room, even as early as twelve hours after the kidnapping," Zexion said, popping some sort of pickled vegetable into his mouth and chewing. Once he was finished, he picked up his plate and stood up before continuing.

"I'll go check the Organization's database for all members with powers capable of absorbing residual energy. That way, we should be able to narrow down a list of possible suspects..."

* * *

In the Fangirl Detection System room, Zagan sat quietly in front of the computer screen and watched. He had apparently been sleeping better recently, as he was sitting up straight and focusing on the screen as usual today, rather than falling asleep in his chair.

Naminé sat just a few chairs away, drawing in one of her sketchpads to pass the time. Exactly _what_ she was drawing, even she didn't know-_-_it appeared to be a strange, floating bridge leading to some kind of huge round structure, with a small rectangular door opening up in the side. Whatever it was, she had seen it in Zagan's memory the week before.

In order to look into one's memories, Naminé needed a clear look at their eyes... and since Zagan wore those shiny, reflective-lensed glasses all the time, that meant that his memories were usually kept completely out of her reach. But on that day one week ago, when he had fallen out of his chair, Zagan's glasses had slipped off. Naminé had managed to get a split-second's glance at his eyes then, but before she could take a closer look at his memories, he had awakened enough to realize that his glasses had fallen off and promptly returned them to their place.

In that one moment when she had access to Zagan's memories, she saw many things. Most of them were images of places in the Organization's base-_-_the control panels of the security systems, the Fangirl Detection System computer, the hallways, the main entrance, the cafeteria, and Zagan's room. But one image stuck out more than all the rest: the strange, pure-white sphere hanging in nothingness with the floating, disconnected-looking bridge leading up to it. Even as she was drawing it, she had no idea what it could be. Perhaps it was an image from Zagan's dreams... but if so, why did it stand out so strongly among his other memories?

Naminé didn't have much time to think about it further-_-_the computer in front of her beeped, Zagan pushed a few buttons, and almost immediately a Fangirl alarm began to go off at full blast. She closed her sketchbook and looked up at the computer, noticing that each of its screens were now focused on an area where a decent-sized Fangirl swarm had suddenly appeared.

"They just showed up," Zagan mumbled to himself, "No gradual buildup in numbers like what we've seen before... all of them just came through at once."

Not long afterward, the door to the room swung open and a certain blue-haired elf burst in. Zagan and Naminé both turned to face him-_-_it wasn't often that Saix was seen in the Fangirl Detection System room, after all. He was usually busy taking orders from Xemnas and relaying them to the other members, or searching the base to make sure none of the younger members had brought in anything that wasn't allowed-_-_for example, cell phones and computers with Internet connections, which could provide the Fangirls with an easy way to sneak in unnoticed.

"Saix? What're you doing down here?", Zagan asked, adjusting his glasses slightly as he spun around in his chair to face him. "I mean, there's no way _you're_ planning to head out and deal with the Fangirl swarm, right?"

Saix scowled slightly, then spoke.

"Under normal circumstances, you would be right," he said, "But unfortunately, today is anything but normal. Most of our members are busy searching for Roxas, or investigating his disappearance..."

Zagan nodded, then began to laugh slightly.

"So Mr. Second-in-Command himself is volunteering to help clear out a swarm this time... never thought I'd see the day. Naminé, you'd better get the Dimensional Hippievan ready for the trip-_-_Saix here doesn't look like he'll be too happy if we make him wait."

Rather than leaving in a hurry as Zagan seemed to be expecting, Saix just stood and crossed his arms, staring down toward the other man.

"I'm not going alone," he said, "And I am far from the only one who's been neglecting my Fangirl-extermination duties... Zagan."

Zagan gulped, immediately realizing what Saix was implying.

"What, me? Well, you know, I'm really not much of a fighter, so_-"_

Saix's expression became even more annoyed than before, and he didn't even let Zagan finish his sentence.

"I'm not taking that excuse this time. You know just as well as I that you are one of the more capable fighters in the Organization, at least among the non-numbered members."

Zagan attempted to come up with some other way out of it, but after stuttering out several half-formed words, he found that he just couldn't think of anything that would sway Saix. Shrugging, he stood up and began to walk over toward the room's door.

"So," he said, passing Saix, "It's just you and me against a whole swarm, huh?"

"No," Saix responded, turning and beginning to head out the door as well. "I've already chosen another member to go as well. He headed out on his own shortly after the Fangirl alarm went off."

Zagan scratched his beard for a second, wondering how someone could leave for the site of a swarm on their own without taking the Dimensional Hippievan.

"Oh," he said, finally remembering. "You mean _that_ guy... the one with the flying motorcycle. Hmm... you sure he'll actually make it there in time on that thing?"

"He assured me that he would not be late," Saix answered, not even bothering to turn and face Zagan.

* * *

"Are you absolutely certain?", Luxord asked, speaking into a telephone. On the other end was the Prime Minister of Japan-_-_or, at least, that was who the British gambler was _trying_ to get in touch with. Instead, he had gotten caught in the net of bureaucracy that came along with any government, and he was currently trying to wring information out of some lower-ranking official.

Needless to say, he was getting a bit frustrated with the whole process. Within a few minutes, he gave up on his attempt at talking with the Japanese government, hanging up the phone and grumbling in annoyance.

"Not having much luck, huh?"

Luxord turned in the direction of the voice to see Xaldin, sitting in one of the chairs nearby and munching away and some kind of sandwich.

"As usual when dealing with the bloody government," the gambler muttered, picking up a clipboard from nearby and crossing something off with a pen. "What you overheard just now was my _fourth_ attempt at contacting the Japanese Prime Minister..."

He put the clipboard back down and joined Xaldin, plopping down into another one of the chairs with a sigh.

"They don't _seem_ to know anything at all about Roxas' disappearance," he continued, "But since I haven't had a chance to get in touch with any of their government's higher-ranking officials, I really can't say for sure."

"Huh... maybe you oughta make a personal appearance over there," Xaldin said, taking a bite of his sandwich. "Y'know, show off your powers a little so they know what kinda stuff they're dealin' with. I bet that'd get 'em to talk."

"No, no, that wouldn't do... we can't just barge into the Prime Minister's office and make a scene," Luxord replied, shaking his head. "We already have quite a few of the world's governments after us, in addition to the Fangirls... making _more_ enemies is the last thing we need to be doing right now."

The hairy elf just nodded slightly, choosing to silently finish his sandwich rather than saying anything else.

"Hey!", another voice called out, breaking the silence and causing the two men to glance up, "What're you guys doing?"

"Hmm? Oh, it's you," Luxord said, scratching his beard as he attempted to remember the name of the girl who had just entered the room. "Um... let me see, I know I've heard your name before..."

"Kisaki," Xaldin said, crumpling up the wrapper from his sandwich and tossing it into a nearby trash can. "She's the new kid Zexion's been training, remember?"

"Oh, yes... I remember now. You must be quite bored lately, what with all the training sessions being postponed until after the search parties return."

"Nah, it's okay," she said, sitting down in another empty chair, "With everybody busy searching for Roxas, I can go pretty much anywhere in the base without getting yelled at."

Luxord raised an eyebrow; somehow, he knew that "anywhere in the base" most likely meant "Vexen's lab." That was one of the few places where entering without permission would result in one being yelled at, after all.

A few minutes of silence passed before Xaldin suddenly got the odd feeling that he was being watched. Glancing around the room, he couldn't find anyone who could be watching him... until he turned toward the chair next to him and found Kisaki staring directly at his face.

"What're you lookin' at?"

"Those sideburns," she said, looking almost as if she was about to reach out and attempt to grab one, "They're huge! Why don't you ever shave 'em?"

Xaldin's face immediately took on a look of shock.

"Whoa whoa whoa... did you just say what I think you just said?", the elf said, backing away slightly as if the suggestion of removing his sideburns frightened him in some way. "I mean, I trim 'em up a little here and there every now and then... I like to keep 'em in the ol' shark-fin shape, y'know? But shave 'em all the way off? Hell no! That'd be like... like cuttin' off all my braids, or somethin'!"

"Yeah, why _do_ you wear your hair like that all the time?", Kisaki asked, grabbing one of the rope-like black braids and fiddling with it. Xaldin flinched, somehow knowing that an even more terrifying suggestion than her first one was coming.

"Oh, I know! You should take it out of those nasty braids and spike it up! I borrowed some of Demyx's hair gel, so if you need any..."

The elf stood up, yanking the stray braid away from Kisaki's hands before she could even attempt to untie it, and shuddered slightly.

"What the... spike it up! That's... damn, that's just ridiculous! Who ever heard of an elf with spiky hair?"

He took a few steps away from the chair, then paused. Apparently, he had thought of an elf with spiky hair that he had been forgetting.

"Well, yeah, I mean... Saix's kinda sticks up a little on top, but it's not really _spiky_, y'know?"

Kisaki looked up at him and frowned slightly, apparently disappointed about the fact that she would never get a chance to see Xaldin with a different hairstyle. He sighed and shook his head a little, then shrugged.

"Anyway, I'm outta here," he said, turning and walking toward the door. "My guard shift at the main entrance starts in a few minutes, and Xiggy won't be too happy about it if I'm late."

* * *

Naminé stared up at the Fangirl Detection System's monitor, still not quite sure what to make of the sudden appearance of the Fangirl swarm. Could they really show up so quickly without even the slightest warning? After seeing Zagan fall asleep on the job the week before, she wasn't so sure if she could believe it. What if he had briefly fallen asleep again and missed the early signs of the swarm's approach?

Of course, as bad as it was that the guy in charge of Fangirl alarms could have fallen asleep on the job again, the other possibility was even worse. In every past swarm, Fangirls traveling through the Internet could only appear in the physical world a few at a time-_-_if they had somehow learned to cross over faster than that, they would be an even bigger problem than they already were.

She sighed slightly, glanced up just long enough to notice the three Organization symbols appearing on the screen, and then returned to her sketchbook as always.

* * *

The Dimensional Hippievan rolled to a stop as usual, narrowly missing a poorly-parked car as it slipped into the next space over. The mismatched pair of Organization members had ended up in the parking lot of a restaurant somewhere, presumably in Japan based on the language most of the signs were written in. Saix emerged first, calmly stepping out of the driver's side of the van; he was followed shortly afterward by Zagan, who slid open the side door and hopped out.

"Huh... don't see Harrison around anywhere," the man in the glasses said, taking a look at the buildings and busy streets around them. "Guess he didn't make it here on time after all. You owe me ten bucks."

"I don't owe you anything," Saix muttered, not even bothering to look at Zagan and instead focusing his attention on their surroundings. "Least of all money for some foolish bet that I never even agreed to... Axel should have taught you better than that."

Zagan shrugged, smirking slightly.

"Heh, this is _Axel_ we're talking about here. He'd have done the same thing... except he'd probably bet a pizza or something."

He walked off across the street for a moment, pausing to listen for any signs of Fangirl presence. As he didn't have Saix's ears, it was hard to hear much of anything over the hustle and bustle of the big city; between the sounds of cars and bicycles and the voices of people chattering on and on in a language he didn't understand, Zagan wasn't having much luck picking up on anything else.

Throughout all of this, Saix remained perfectly still, his ears twitching slightly in the way that elves' ears often did when they were listening carefully. Every once and a while, some part of his face would twitch as well-_-_whether it was from annoyance at the sounds of the city or something else, however, was impossible to tell. Zagan walked back across the road once another platoon of bicycles had passed by, and just watched Saix for a few moments before speaking.

"So... you heard any signs of Fangirls yet? Because I've_-"_

Saix cut him off with a glare and a wave of his hand, then pointed upward.

"Quiet. They're all around us," he said in a harsh whisper, "On the rooftops."

Zagan smirked again, walking over to the wall of the nearest building and craning his neck to look straight up. There was a bit of decorative stone hanging over the edge of the building's roof, which was more than enough for what he had in mind.

"Fighting monsters on the rooftops of a major city, eh?", he said, stepping back a bit and turning toward Saix. "Sounds like something you'd see on some low-budget TV show. But hey, I'm not complaining..."

He flicked one hand upward, and immediately a yellowish-orange glow surrounded it. In a matter of seconds, this glow rocketed upward, solidifying into a rope of twisted fungal threads as it went and clinging to the stone on contact.

"I'll bet you ten bucks that Harrison's already up there," he said, tugging on the strange fungus-rope lightly to make sure it was anchored onto the building before he began to ascend.

Saix just glared at him in response, not even feeling the need to put his opinion into words this time. Zagan laughed and shrugged.

"Eh, suit yourself... I just hope there's still a few left up there by the time you catch up with us."

With that, Zagan shot up into the air along the side of the building, pulled upward as the fungus-rope rapidly contracted. Within a matter of seconds, he had reached the top and pulled himself over, dematerializing the rope once his feet had landed safely on the flat surface of the roof. Just as he had suspected, Harrison-_-_a gray-haired, bearded man with a pair of dark sunglasses and a flying motorcycle-_-_was already there; Zagan spotted the odd vehicle hovering over the next building while its owner blasted the Fangirls below him with sprays of thick, grayish-colored smoke.

There was a heavy _thud_ next to him as Saix leaped up over the edge, apparently clearing the entire building in a single jump. For just a moment, Zagan wondered if that was how the blue-haired elf managed to get all the way up into that tall chair of his in the meeting room; the thought quickly left his mind, however, when a Glomper Fangirl noticed the two of them and came charging in their direction.

The taller of the two men held out his hands and prepared to summon his weapon, but before he had the chance Saix lunged forward, materializing his massive sword in mid-swing and splitting the Fangirl cleanly in two with little effort. As the fragments of green light and computer code scattered and vanished, Zagan couldn't help but be impressed.

"You sure you can't handle the whole swarm alone?", he said, lowering his hands again as Saix stood up and readied his weapon for another attack. "I mean, yeah, that wasn't exactly a Lexaeus-level swing just now, but... when you're dealing with weak Fangirls like these, what difference will it make?"

Saix growled slightly, then turned and answered.

"Fangirls are irrational and unpredictable creatures," he said, "A minor swarm can turn deadly in an instant, especially now that their intelligence seems to have increased. Have you learned nothing in the past month?"

Seemingly ignoring Saix's words, Zagan did not reply; he only held up his hands and began to summon his weapon once again. There was a flash of yellowish-orange energy for a moment, which then condensed into an almost liquid-looking series of dark orange chains. These darkened as they became more solid, eventually forming into a bizzare and complicated-looking weapon. On one end was a scythe-like blade; on the other, a heavy weight. Linking the two opposites was a chain so long that it made the weapon look impractical-_-_it was hard to believe that Zagan could actually use such a thing.

For once, Saix reacted slightly, his eyes widening a bit. Though he had heard that Zagan had some sort of chain-based weapon, he had never actually seen it in action; he was apparently having a hard time imagining the man who kept himself holed up in the computer room all day, and claimed to be a weak fighter, using such a difficult-looking weapon.

"Yeah, pretty slick huh?", he said, noticing the look on Saix's face. "It's called a kusarigama. Apparently it's a Japanese weapon, and I don't have the slightest clue what the name means... but the important thing is that it can do _this._"

With a sudden flick of his wrist, Zagan sent the weighted end of the weapon flying across the rooftop, smashing into a Fangirl and sending it stumbling backward into another group of the creatures. He then yanked it back suddenly and lashed out with the other end, cutting through the Fangirls before they even knew what hit them.

"I'll need plenty of room to use it, of course, so you two should probably keep your distance," he added, pulling the bladed end of the weapon back toward him and just barely missing Saix's leg in the process. "But hey, Harrison's in the air on that motorcycle, and you probably can't wait to get away from me... so it all works out. Any objections from Mr. Second-in-Command?"

Saix just scowled and shook his head, then leaped off toward the roof of the next building, landing in the middle of a circle of Fangirls and severing their heads in a single slash before they could even react to his presence.

"Good answer."

At this moment, the Fangirls on the building finally seemed to notice Zagan. He just stood at the edge of the building, casually swinging the weighted end of his weapon around as the creatures approached. On the other building, Saix and Harrison were fighting a much more alert group of opponents-_-_as soon as the blue-haired elf had landed, every last Fangirl on the rooftop had turned to face him. A few of them were quickly knocked on their faces as Harrison swooped down on his flying motorcycle, removing one hand from the handlebars just long enough to take a swing at them with what looked like a police baton. Before they could counterattack, he pulled up into the air once again, quickly moving out of their reach.

Saix swung his sword down, but the Fangirls in front of him jumped away just in time to avoid it. Unfortunately for the Fangirls, however, the sword wasn't the only thing they had to worry about-_-_as soon as it collided with the roof of the building, a shockwave of whitish-blue energy flared up and sent them flying. One Fangirl flew off at an odd angle and missed the roof, falling to its death on the streets below; a metallic _crunch_ and a brief green glow were soon followed by the sound of a car alarm going off.

Harrison took one of his hands off of the handlebars again and blasted a group of Fangirls with a cloud of smoke, causing them to cough and claw at their own eyes in an attempt to clear their vision. While the Fangirls were stumbling around blindly, Saix charged in and unleashed another shockwave from his sword, blowing the smoke aside and destroying most of the Fangirls. Those who weren't killed instantly went flying, landing on their fellow Fangirls and knocking them down.

While the other two Organization members were fighting the majority of the swarm, Zagan just walked lazily across the rooftop, occasionally swinging the bladed end of his weapon around and slicing through any Fangirl foolish enough to get close. Oddly enough, the creatures didn't seem to be especially interested in attacking Zagan; some would step toward him and prepare to attack every once and a while, but they seemed to move slower and attack with less ferocity than the ones going after Saix. Even those that attempted to attack Harrison were a bit quicker, though their attacks were thwarted by the fact that the bearded man was usually about twenty feet out of their reach.

Apparently, this fact was not lost on Saix; after fighting off several Fangirls, he turned toward Zagan and scowled slightly. Though the way that the creatures weren't attacking quite as fiercely was strange, the thing that Saix was more bothered by was the fact that Zagan hadn't gone ahead and finished them off yet.

"Zagan," he said, speaking loudly enough to be heard despite being half a building away, "Don't just stand there. Destroy the Fangirls and then move on to another rooftop."

The man in the shiny glasses glanced over toward Saix and shrugged.

"Hey, I haven't used this thing in a while," he said, waving the bladed end of his weapon slightly. "I've gotten a little rusty. Just getting in a little practice before I moved on to a tougher bunch of Fangirls."

He then swung the scythe blade around himself in a wide circle, clearing most of the roof's remaining Fangirls all at once. Saix blinked and frowned, not sure if he could believe that Zagan could pull something like that off so easily if he really was so out-of-practice with his weapon.

As Saix stopped paying attention to Zagan and turned his attention back toward the swarm, he found himself face-to-face with a type of Fangirl that he hadn't seen on the rooftops before. It looked very similar to the Glompers, but rather than attempting to hug him, it simply crashed into him before he could react and then went bouncing off faster than any Fangirl he had seen in years. The blue-haired elf stumbled back a bit; though the impact of the Fangirl wasn't nearly enough to knock him down, it was still more than he had been expecting.

"Both of you," he called out, "Be on your guard... something about the swarm has changed."

As the new Fangirl collided with the wall on the other side of the rooftop and came bouncing back toward him, he finally got a clear enough look to recognize it. It was a Hyper Fangirl-_-_a common type that behaved much like a slow-witted Glomper at first until something set it off, causing it to go into a hyperactive, bouncing frenzy that wouldn't stop until either it was destroyed or the swarm retreated.

This particular Hyper Fangirl stopped just a few feet short of slamming into Saix again, accidentally impaling itself on the point of his claymore. It instantly shattered into green light and computer code, leaving no trace behind once it had all faded away.

On the other side of the same rooftop, there was a high-pitched squealing sound followed by a sudden crash_-_-several Hyper Fangirls had jumped up and attacked Harrison by slamming into his motorcycle, knocking him off and sending him falling to the roof below. The vehicle followed shortly afterward, narrowly missing its rider but plowing through several Fangirls before coming to a stop.

"Damn," the older man grumbled, picking himself up off the ground and dusting off the black cloak that, unlike most other members, he only wore during missions. "A fall like that's definitely gonna scratch 'er up a bit..."

He summoned one of his baton-like weapons in each hand, knocking away several approaching Fangirls that thought they could get a hit in while he was still stunned from his fall, and then calmly walked over toward his motorcycle and removed the key from the ignition. The last thing he needed was some Fangirl trying to steal it while he wasn't looking, after all.

Zagan hopped over to the other building, crouching as he landed so that a Hyper Fangirl missed him and went flying right over his head (and soon afterward, all the way down to the street below.) Saix and Harrison now appeared to be fighting off half a swarm by themselves; crowds of Hyper Fangirls that had formerly been waiting at the tops of the surrounding buildings had begun to close in on the black-cloaked group. Despite the fact that he wasn't at his full strength during the daylight hours when the moon was nowhere to be seen, Saix was easily tearing through the swarms; Harrison was having a bit more trouble now that he had been knocked off of his motorcycle, but his smokescreens did their job of confusing the Fangirls long enough for him to move into a good position for a counterattack.

Six Hyper Fangirls landed on the roof at once, wiggling back and forth slightly as they stared at Saix and giggled to themselves. He growled and raised his sword, but just as he made his move, the creatures bounced high into the air and avoided the attack. They apparently weren't aware of Zagan's presence on the second building, however, and were cut down in midair by a wide swing from the bladed end of his weapon. As glowing, shattering Fangirl halves rained down all around him, Saix turned and glared at Zagan for a second.

"Why do you insist on relying solely on your weapon?", he asked, pointing toward the kusarigama as the handle of its blade returned to its owner's hand. "Even though you are fully capable of fighting with your other abilities, you have used none of them in this battle. Explain yourself."

Zagan shrugged and quickly lashed out at a nearby Fangirl, then turned to answer Saix's question as the creature flashed and disappeared.

"Like I told you before, my fighting's gotten a little rusty since the last time I was on an extermination mission," he said, slowly swinging the chain around in his hand as he spoke.

"Besides... aren't you the last person who should be complaining about the whole 'relying solely on your weapon' thing? From where I'm standing, it looks like it's been working pretty well for you."

Saix's face twisted into a snarl and he turned, preparing to lunge toward Zagan. Before he had the chance, however, he was stopped by the familiar feeling of clawed, groping Fangirl hands latching onto his body. Turning away from the other man and glancing down at his own legs, he noticed that at least half a dozen Glompers had latched onto him while he had been distracted. He could already feel his energy draining away from him, though not quickly enough to be much of a problem if he removed the Fangirls quickly. Dropping his sword and clenching his fists tightly, he let loose a powerful roar, accompanied by an aura of pale blue energy that surged up all around his body. For just a moment, the pupils disappeared from his eyes and the scar on his forehead became jagged, just as they did when he entered his berserk state.

When the aura around him faded, the Fangirls that had latched onto Saix were nowhere to be seen. The last traces of their existence, the faint shapes of greenish zeroes and ones hanging in the air, quickly vanished, and the elf reached down and lifted his sword once again.

"As you can see, Zagan... I do not rely on my weapon as heavily as you seem to believe. As your superior officer, I suggest you follow my example."

* * *

The rest of the extermination mission was fairly uneventful. Aside from the unexpected appearance of the Hyper Fangirls, nothing out of the ordinary happened, and before too long the entire swarm had been wiped out. It seemed that the swarm appearing all at once, rather than gradually building up, could have just been a freak exception (rather than some new direction in Fangirl intelligence) after all.

Saix and Zagan climbed back into the Dimensional Hippievan, the two of them barely even sweating despite fighting off most of the swarm. Surprisingly, Saix actually seemed to be more worn-out than Zagan was, most likely the result of having some of his energy drained by the Glompers (however briefly.) The oldest of the three men carefully hefted his damaged motorcycle up into the back of the van before joining them, taking one of the seats in the back.

"So, how'd you pull it off?"

Zagan turned to face the bearded man sitting behind him, raising an eyebrow slightly. If not for the shiny glasses concealing his eyes, he probably would have looked a bit confused.

"Pull what off?"

"Fightin' off those Fangirls without even gettin' touched once," Harrison explained, removing his sunglasses and wiping sweat and dust away from them before he continued. "Almost seemed like they weren't too interested in goin' after you, compared to me 'n' Scarface."

Saix flinched slightly at the sound of his unwanted nickname, but chose not to react any more than that, instead starting up the Hippievan.

"Eh, I dunno... guess I was just lucky," Zagan answered, waving his hands around slightly. "Plus, you know how Fangirls are. Not too big on the rational thinking and all... who knows, maybe the only reason they weren't chasing after me so much was because they like you guys more."

Harrison nodded, wiped some sweat off of his forehead, and put his sunglasses back on.

"Yeah... never can tell what those things're thinkin'. Sometimes they seem like they're not thinkin' at all, and other times... well, other times it's how much they _are_ thinkin' that's the scary part."


	16. Secrets Not Quite Revealed

**CHAPTER 15**  
_~ Secrets Not Quite Revealed ~_

Roxas awakened and found himself hanging limply from the strange, rubbery white wall once again, unable to do much more than stare off into space. Though he had been there for days now without anything to eat or drink, somehow he didn't feel any different than normal; it was as if all of his body's vital functions had become frozen in time as soon as he was dragged into the Internet.

Glancing around the room, he noticed that the Fangirl Queen was absent again; this was no surprise, as it seemed that she spent most of her time somewhere else these days, only occasionally making an appearance in the room that seemed to serve as her home. Somewhat more surprising was the absence of _any_ Fangirls-_-_Roxas rarely had the room completely to himself like this, at least not while he was awake.

After taking a better look around the room, the spiky-haired boy noticed that something about the place seemed to have changed since the last time he had seen it. The blank, featureless white walls were now covered in dozens-_-_or maybe even _hundreds_-_-_of strange, cocoon-like growths. Looking up, he noticed that they were dangling down from somewhere high above, attached to the ceiling by long strings of some sort of partially-translucent slime.

A slight shifting sound alerted him that the room had a visitor. He glanced over toward the source of the sound just in time to spot a tall man wearing the black cloak of Organization XIII... the same man that had kidnapped him and brought him here.

"Zagan!", Roxas yelled, struggling against his shackles and attempting to push himself away from the wall with his feet. "You... you..."

A few moments of silence passed, with the cloaked man seemingly ignoring him as he walked over to take a look at the cocoons that decorated the walls. He then reached up and removed his hood before turning back toward his captive.

"Wow. Actually awake this time," he said, taking a few steps toward him. "That's new. You're usually over there snoring up a storm when I come by to visit."

"Why are you even here!", the boy snarled. "Why... why would anyone even do something like that? Working for the Fangirls..."

Zagan smirked and took a few steps closer to Roxas, then spoke once again.

"You want an explanation, huh? Well..."

Almost as soon as he had spoken, the air of the room began to crackle with a strange electrical buzzing, and just like many times before, the Fangirl Queen began to form in its center. Zagan paused in the middle of his sentence, turning away from Roxas and walking back over toward the other side of the room.

"Whoops! Looks like I don't have time to explain anything after all," he said, glancing back toward Roxas for a second. "Heh. Maybe next time... if you're even awake, that is."

Turning his head back toward the Fangirl Queen as her form finally solidified, Zagan dropped down on one knee and bowed as always. He then stood back up and looked over toward the cocoons.

"So," he said, reaching up and poking one of them with a gloved finger, "How's this experiment of yours going?"

_"How about I show you?", _the Fangirl Queen's voice echoed throughout the room. She extended one of her tentacles, reaching up toward the nearest of the pods and plucking it off of the wall like some kind of bizarre fruit. She then reached out with another tentacle and plunged it through the outer shell of the cocoon, causing a pale green light to begin glowing from inside of it.

As the Fangirl Queen let the cocoon fall to the ground, something within it began to squirm around. For a few seconds, shapes of hands and feet flailed about blindly, tearing away at the inside of the pod but not managing to do much damage... until, that is, the clawed hands finally found the hole left by the Fangirl Queen's tentacle. One hand gripped the outside of the pod on either side, then both yanked in opposing directions, pulling the shell apart.

The creature within the pod resembled a Fangirl, but something about it was a bit different. Its text-symbol face was oriented vertically rather than horizontally, and its hair was shorter than that of most Fangirls. The biggest difference of all, however, was its overall body shape-_-_rather than resembling a skinny, malformed teenage girl, this new creature was clearly male.

"Male Fangirls, eh?", Zagan said, taking a good look at the creature and then turning to face the Fangirl Queen. "So it _did _work after all... that kid really must be something special, if having him around let you break the rules like that."

_"Of course,"_ the Fangirl Queen said. _"In case you've forgotten so soon, he _is _the only one of his kind."_

There was a brief silence as the new creature stood up and began to crawl around the room, staring at everything around it with an oddly excited look. A few minutes passed before Zagan turned his attention away from the thing and spoke once again.

"So... do they have a name?", he asked, glancing back toward the middle of the room. The Fangirl Queen didn't answer.

"Well, if you didn't have anything in mind... we might as well just go ahead and call 'em 'Fanboys.'"

* * *

Luxord sat in a large, expensive-looking chair, with a telephone in his right hand and a rather annoyed look on his face. Just from looking at him, you would have never guessed that he was talking to a gang boss who claimed to have Roxas tied to a chair in an abandoned warehouse.

Nobody had any idea how Japanese street gangs even found out about Roxas' disappearance in the first place, but they clearly had, and now one of them was trying to use his kidnapping as part of some poorly-conceived plan to make some quick cash. The gambler had to hold back a yawn as the criminal on the other end of the line went on and on about the specifics of how the money would have to be delivered, only stopping when Luxord hurriedly agreed to the terms and hung up.

"Can you believe these people?", he said, setting down the phone and turning toward the occupants of the room's other chairs. "They honestly had no idea what I meant when I asked for the drop-off point's coordinates in latitude and longitude..."

"Well, duh," Larxene said. "These guys are just your average everyday street thugs. As far as intelligence goes, they're not much better than the Fangirls."

She summoned one of her knives and began fiddling around with it, tossing it up into the air and then catching it. Apparently, she was already getting bored with the most recent lead on Roxas' whereabouts, however unlikely it was that he was actually being held captive in some dusty old warehouse by a bunch of weaklings that he most likely could have beaten with both hands tied behind his back.

"Still... I suppose we shouldn't just ignore them," Luxord added.

Larxene caught her knife once again and stopped throwing it for just long enough to turn toward him, a confused look on her face.

"And why not?"

"They may not have _Roxas _in that warehouse... but that doesn't mean they haven't taken a hostage at all," he answered. "And there's no telling what they might do if nobody shows up to drop off that money an hour from now."

"So," Xaldin spoke up, "Whaddya think we should do about it, then?"

"Well... I was planning on going to deliver the money in a few minutes," Luxord began, "And then..."

"Heh. _You're_ going to drop off the money?", Larxene interrupted. "You really think we're going to let _you _carry around a briefcase with thousands of dollars?"

"If you're referring to my previous gambling habits, I'll have you know that I haven't set foot in a casino in over a year."

Larxene snickered.

"Only because Xemnas doesn't let you have access to the money vaults."

Xaldin just sat and watched as the other two argued back and forth, with Luxord constantly attempting to finish his sentences only for Larxene to blurt something out in the middle and interrupt him. Eventually, he decided to stand up and break up the fight with a compromise between the two.

"'Ey, you guys... calm down," he said, walking over in front of their chairs. "If you keep arguin' like this, you're gonna be late for your meeting with those gangsters."

This immediately got their attention.

"So, Xaldin," Luxord said, "What do you suppose we should do?"

The hairy elf sat back down and scratched his head for a second, then turned to face the other two Organization members.

"Well, since you two can't agree on who should do this... why not both of ya?"

Larxene smiled, apparently approving of Xaldin's idea. Luxord, on the other hand, looked a bit worried... which was entirely justified, considering the situation. However, neither of them said a word, instead running off toward the Dimensional Hippievan's launch tunnel in a mad rush to get to the driver's seat first.

* * *

Naminé sat in her oversized chair in the Fangirl Detection System room, with a sketchpad in her lap as always. She mostly seemed focused on her drawing, but she would occasionally glance up at the monitors in front of her, checking to see if any Fangirls had appeared or anything else unusual was happening. So far, however, nothing had.

Like most days without Fangirl swarms, it was very quiet in the computer room. Zagan had left for his lunch break nearly half an hour earlier, which meant that he likely wouldn't be seen again for quite a while; he always seemed to take the longest lunch breaks.

Naminé had always figured that this was just a bad habit he had picked up while training under Axel, but lately, she wasn't so sure. Between the overly-long lunch breaks and the constant bathroom breaks, it almost seemed like Zagan was gone more often than he was here, and she had yet to actually find anyone who had seen him during his mysterious disappearances. And on top of all of that, there was the strange image she had seen in his memories...

_"His eyes,"_ the tiny girl thought. _"He always wears those weird glasses, and never lets anyone see his eyes... it almost seems like he's hiding something."_

At that very moment, a small _blip _from the Fangirl Detection System computer broke her concentration, and she nearly snapped the point off of her pencil's lead. She set aside her notebook and focused on the screen in front of her, where a tiny speck of pink had flared up.

A few minutes passed, and nothing changed much. Several more pink specks popped up, but they didn't seem to gather together like most Fangirl swarms. In fact, the small group could hardly qualify as a "swarm" at all; there were only a handful of them, and rather than spreading out to cover the area where they had appeared, they seemed to be rushing straight up the side of a mountain.

A few seconds later, Naminé's eyes widened and she immediately began typing away at the computer. The screen zoomed out a bit, showing that the Fangirls were not just charging up the slope of any old mountain; they were headed straight toward the very same mountain where the Organization's base was located.

She went back to the keyboard again for a few moments, then slammed the palm of her hand down on a larger button built into the wall of the room.

* * *

Luxord and Larxene had only just reached the Dimensional Hippievan when they heard the familiar sound of a Fangirl alarm blaring from the speakers spread throughout the halls of the base. When the sound startled Luxord into pausing just short of the driver's-side door, Larxene took advantage of the situation and hopped in, slamming the door behind her.

"Oh, bloody hell..."

The gambler didn't waste any more time after that, rushing to the other side of the van and buckling up just in time to close his door before Larxene sped off. After a few seconds of rapid acceleration, the van rocketed out of the end of the launch tunnel and vanished in a flash of energy.

"Hmm," he said, turning to face Larxene, "So you _do_know how to drive this thing after all. Can't say I'm not surprised."

She stuck her tongue out at him for a second, but otherwise ignored his comments, focusing on piloting the vehicle to its destination. The van hadn't been programmed to find the abandoned warehouse automatically, so she was going to have to get it there the hard way.

Well, "hard" in comparison to the usual "wait for the van to get there on its own and then park," anyway. As usual, the whole trip only took a few minutes, though it did involve a few more sudden turns and changes in speed than most rides on the Dimensional Hippievan. When the van reappeared in normal space once again, Larxene quickly parked it behind several Dumpsters near one of several old warehouses. She then unbuckled her seatbelt and hopped out of the van, immediately walking over toward one of the warehouses without even bothering to look around.

"What... wait!", Luxord blurted out, grabbing the suitcase full of ransom money and quickly walking after her. "Where are you _going? _I haven't even given you the address for the right warehouse yet!"

"I don't need directions," she said, pointing toward the nearest warehouse. "It's that one right there."

"But... how do you _know!_", Luxord almost yelled. "There's at least a good half-dozen warehouses here, and they all look _exactly_like that one!"

Larxene turned toward the gambler and smirked.

"What's the matter? Did you _already_forget what I did before joining the Organization?"

Luxord was about to say something else, but instead paused with his mouth still hanging slightly open and groaned. He had, indeed, forgotten about the situation Larxene had been in before joining the Organization... but now that she had mentioned it, he started to remember a few small details that he had heard from other members over the years since she had first joined. How she already knew how to fight on her first day of training, how she already seemed to be an expert with knives the instant she first managed to summon her weapons... there were even rumors going around that she had been a hired assassin in the past, or even that she had been involved in an organized crime family.

"So," she said, getting a little impatient, "Are we going to do this or not?"

After another brief pause, Luxord glanced down at the suitcase, then over at the old warehouse. He then nodded and walked after Larxene, both of them heading toward a small door in the side of the building.

* * *

Zexion walked down the hallway leading toward the base's main entrance, his book already materialized in his hands and his eyes focused straight ahead. It wasn't something that happened often-_-_Zexion was prepared for a fight.

"Wait a second!", Tundo shouted, running down the hallway in an attempt to catch up with the blue-haired man. "You're goin' to fight off a Fangirl swarm by yourself!"

"It's not exactly much of a swarm," Zexion said, turning back slightly. "And anyway, Xigbar is on guard duty at the main entrance. If things get to be too much for me to handle, he can always step in."

Tundo was left in the dust as Zexion continued toward the entrance, nodding to Xigbar as he passed the eyepatched old elf and not stopping until he had set foot on the rocky ground just outside the Organization's base. He couldn't yet see the group of Fangirls that the Fangirl Detection System had picked up, but it only took a few quick sniffs to pick up the scent of the creatures on the wind. Hoping to prevent them from finding the base's main entrance, he immediately started the climb down the side of the mountain to meet them part of the way up.

Within a few minutes, he was finally able to see what appeared to be a few Glompers creeping rapidly up the piles of rocks. A few minutes later, he was also able to _hear_ them; they were giggling creepily, as usual. With a closer look, however, he was able to see that not all of the shapes making their way up the mountainside were Fangirls at all-_-_there was also a small Japanese boy with slightly spiky hair, breathing heavily as he scrambled up the rocks away from the pursuing Fangirls as quickly he could.

"Hmm," he said to himself, stopping for a moment to watch as the boy climbed closer and closer toward his position, "Kind of a strange place for a kid to just be running around alone..."

Zexion crouched down and opened his book, propping it up on a flat rock in front of him, and then raised one hand in the direction of the approaching Fangirls. He concentrated for a few seconds, and a swirl of blue-black energy began to form in front of the open pages of the Lexicon. A few blank pages seemed to tear themselves free from the book, bouncing down a few feet of rocky hillside before shifting in shape and size until they seemed to be small boulders crashing down toward the Fangirls. The terrified boy panicked and curled up into the fetal position at the sight, believing himself to be trapped between an avalanche and a gang of giggling monsters... but the illusionary boulders passed over him harmlessly, changing directions in mid-bounce so that they just managed to clear his height before toppling down straight toward the Fangirls.

Another minute or two passed as Zexion dematerialized his weapon and quickly cleared the rest of the distance between his previous position and the spot where the Fangirls had been. The greenish light and computer code of the destroyed Fangirls had long faded, but the scared little boy they had been pursuing was still lying in the same place he had been in before, shivering slightly as footsteps approached. After glancing down at him for a few seconds, Zexion finally decided to try and get his attention.

"Hey," the blue-haired man said, "You can get up now. The Fangirls are gone."

He went completely still for a moment, then suddenly sprang back to his feet and looked up at the (slightly) taller man in front of him. The boy's eyes widened almost as soon as he spotted Zexion's familiar-looking black cloak, and his mouth suddenly broke into a wide grin.

"Whoa!", he blurted out, "You're from Organization XIII, aren't you?"

Zexion was a bit stunned. That was _definitely _not the kind of reaction he had been expecting; several times on previous missions, he had been required to chase and calm down kids who were almost as frightened of the Organization's members as they were of the Fangirls themselves. If it wasn't so utterly strange, this boy's excited response would almost be a welcome change from the usual fear and confusion.

"How... how did you know who we are?"

"I saw you guys on TV!", he said, still overly excited. "You were there! And this big guy with dreadlocks, and a couple of other guys too!"

For a moment, the kid almost seemed to be _shaking _with excitement; Zexion honestly wouldn't have been surprised if he had pulled out a scrap of paper and asked for an autograph at this point. Fortunately, he stopped just short of that.

"You guys are AWESOME!"

Zexion blinked a few times, not sure exactly how to react. After a few moments, he finally managed to get a few more words out.

"So... where do you live, anyway? I can't just leave out here in the middle of nowhere."

"You mean I can't come with you?"

"Wait... what?"

"I wanna join Organization XIII!"

For a moment, Zexion was reminded of how Kisaki had first joined-_-_it wasn't every day that someone actually came up and asked them to join, after all, but it seemed strange that it just happened to have happened to _him _twice in such a short span of time. Since the kid had been attacked by Fangirls and survived, however, he did technically meet the requirements for membership. He thought about it for a few moments, then finally gave a tentative answer.

"Well... I can't really say for sure," he said, "New members have to be approved by Xemnas, after all. But I suppose I can at least bring you back to the base and see what he says."

* * *

Half a dozen armed thugs suddenly snapped to attention as two sets of footsteps suddenly echoed throughout the abandoned warehouse, alerting them to the presence of their black-cloaked guests. The leader of the gangsters smirked slightly and nodded toward his minions, and immediately each of them reached into the pockets and took hold of a wide variety of weapons. For a few brief moments afterward, time seemed to almost stand still as they waited for another sound from the direction of the warehouse's entrance...

...but it never came. Before any of the gang members even had a chance to ready their weapons, the two Organization members suddenly appeared in the room with them. The gangsters stepped back a bit in shock at their sudden entrance, not sure exactly what had just happened or how the two relatively-normal-looking intruders had managed it, but then picked up where they had left off and pulled out a variety of knives and semiautomatic pistols from their pockets.

"Oh, you won't be needing those," Luxord said, stepping forward with the briefcase held out in front of his chest. He popped it open for a moment, giving the gang leader a clear view of many stacks of crisp new hundred-dollar bills before closing it up again.

"We've brought the money, just like I promised before. Now, if you could just release your hostage, we'll be on our way."

"Give us the money first, and we'll think about it," the boss said, taking a step toward Luxord and reaching out one hand.

Larxene sighed and muttered something under her breath, then stepped between Luxord and the group of gangsters, pushing the gambler back slightly with one hand and lightly slapping aside the gang leader's outstretched hand with the other.

"What the hell?", one of the thugs said, "You heard the man, the money's ours now!"

"Yeah," another one spoke up, cocking his gun and waving it in her direction, "Get outta the way, ya little bitch!"

"What, do you not wanna ever see this Ro-has kid again, or what?"

Luxord couldn't help but smile a bit, partly at the thug's mispronunciation of Roxas' name and partly at the situation in general. None of the gang members had their eyes on the spiky-haired boy in the corner of the room, who was tied to a chair facing the wall next to a few large crates which almost certainly contained large shipments of something illegal; it would have been so easy for him to slip across the room unnoticed that he barely even felt like trying. Watching the scene unfold in front of him, he decided that doing things his way just wasn't enough of a challenge in this case. He would let Larxene have her fun, just this once.

"If you won't let us have Roxas first," Larxene said, walking right up to the leader of the thugs and getting in his face, "Then you won't be getting any money."

She turned around for a second, seemingly leaving herself open to attack as she took a few steps back. Despite having no idea what they were getting themselves into, none of the thugs tried anything.

"Changed your minds yet?", she asked, turning back toward the gang. "Or are we going to have to do this the hard way?"

The gang boss laughed.

"Heh... I wouldn't call it the _hard _way," he said, motioning toward two of the gun-toting thugs behind him. "In case you didn't notice, we're right next to the ocean here. Do you punks have any idea how easy it'd be to make sure nobody ever finds a couple bodies?"

"Thanks for the good news," Larxene said, her mouth stretching out into an evil grin. "It's been a while since I've had to get away with murder, you know... I might be a little rusty."

With that, she lunged forward. The two gangsters behind the boss took aim in her direction, but she reached them so quickly that neither of them even had a chance to pull the trigger before she was upon them. The room was briefly illuminated with a bright yellowish light, and both gangsters aimlessly fired off several rounds into the air as the electricity caused them to reflexively grip their weapons tighter than before. Both of them collapsed on the floor moments later, small amounts of electricity still crackling across their bodies.

"Wh... wha... what the hell was _that!_"

"Look out, she's got some kinda crazy stun-gun, or somethin'!"

The gang leader turned around and immediately began to back away slowly, finally beginning to realize just what kind of force he was messing with. He watched as the remaining three gangsters readied their guns and knives only to be rapidly disarmed by a series of lightning-fast kicks, punches, and slashes with some sort of knife-like weapons that seemed to have mysteriously appeared in the cloaked woman's hands while he wasn't paying attention. The two who had pulled knives simply had their weapons knocked flying out their hands; the one with the gun was unfortunate enough to be _literally _disarmed, falling to the floor clutching the stump that remained in a feeble attempt to stop the bleeding.

The two goons who still had two functional arms gulped and shivered a bit in fear but kept up the fight, shifting into some sort of martial-arts stance. After circling her for a few moments, they attempted to throw Larxene off by attacking her from two different directions, but she hopped up into the air above them at the last moment and they instead ended up clobbering each other with a punch to the face and a swift kick to the groin. On her way down, she stomped onto their backs with her heels and bounced off of them, bringing both of the thugs down with her as she returned to the floor.

"I believe we'll be taking that hostage off your hands now," Luxord said, frightening the gang boss a bit by unexpectedly tapping him on the shoulder. "Isn't that right, sir?"

The boss, now the only member of his gang left standing, stuttered and glanced around the room a bit before running out of the building screaming.

"Well, looks like he's not going to try and stop us," Larxene said, shrugging slightly. "You can go untie the kid now, I guess. I'll watch the money for you."

While Luxord headed over toward the tied-up boy in the corner of the room, Larxene stealthily slipped a wad of bills out of the box and into one of her pockets, opening and closing the briefcase quietly enough that he didn't even suspect anything. She then sat down ontop of it, fiddling with one of her knives to pass the time while she waited for him to return with Roxas (or, if not Roxas himself, whoever the gangsters had been trying to pass off as him.)

"Well," the British gambler said as he turned the chair around to get a good look at the hostage sitting in it, "He does indeed look like Roxas..."

Larxene perked up for a moment, the prospect of being done with the search for Roxas actually interesting her a bit.

"Unfortunately," he continued, "Whoever this young man is, he's a bit too old to be the boy we're looking for."

Luxord summoned up one of his cards and quickly sliced through all of the ropes binding the boy's arms, then removed the nasty rag that the gang members had used as a gag, tossing it aside and stepping back a bit so that the now-free hostage could stand up at last.

"Whew," he said, "Okay... that was a little scary..."

He groped around at his belt for a moment, mentally kicking himself a bit when he realized that something was missing. Knowing that the mustachioed man in front of him most likely wouldn't have any idea what he was talking about, however, he decided not to mention it. He also decided not to say a word about the unusual powers that the two had displayed, albeit briefly, during the conflict; he had had just about enough trouble for one day already.

"So," Luxord asked, "Where shall we drop you off? I'm assuming you don't live in these old warehouses, after all."

"Oh," he said, yanked away from his own thoughts by the man's words, "Well, I'm not exactly _living _here, but I'm staying at a hotel a few blocks away... it's not too far, really. I can probably just walk."

"Yeah," Larxene spoke up, "And let you get snatched up by _more_ brainless thugs so we'll have to come bail you out _again? _No thanks."

"Not exactly how I would put it," Luxord said, "But Larxene's right, we can't allow you to go wandering back to your hotel alone in a place like this. You're coming with us, my boy."

* * *

The walk back to the Roxas-lookalike's hotel wasn't long, and the three didn't run into any more trouble on the way there-_-_a few homeless men peeked out from behind trash cans as they passed by, but no more gangsters dared to show their faces that day. The hotel was a somewhat cheap one on the outskirts of the city, the type that was just clean and safe enough for poorer travelers to not have any issues with; the worst things that its walls had ever seen were most likely nothing more than minor crimes like drug abuse and prostitution.

"So," Luxord asked, "You've mentioned that you're staying here with a few friends of yours, but you never did mention one thing... your name."

"Oh," the boy said, "Sorry about that... I'm Ventus, but my friends just call me Ven."

The older man nodded slightly, then continued walking across the street toward the hotel's front entrance. Ven's two friends had apparently been waiting for him there in the lobby, as he ran over toward a pair of twenty-somethings standing amid a small pile of luggage almost as soon as he had entered the building. After giving each of them a quick hug, he turned back toward Luxord and Larxene as they finally caught up with him.

"I suppose these are your friends, then?"

"Yeah," Ven said, "Terra and Aqua."

"And who are you?", the blue-haired girl asked, looking a bit suspicious of the black-cloaked duo. "I don't think we've met."

"Ah... yes, I believe this is our first meeting. My name is Durlo Alderley the Third," the gambler answered, introducing himself by his original name rather than the codename he had taken on upon joining the Organization. "And my companion here is Arlene di Guerre."

Larxene twitched slightly, not sure that it was such a good idea for the two to be revealing their true identities to a couple of strangers, but decided not to complain very much for once.

"Heh," she snickered, "Full names and everything... a bit much for a couple of random strangers we'll never see again, don't you think?"

As the two turned and headed out of the hotel, they overheard Ven beginning to explain to his older traveling companions exactly where he had been all this time. He had barely gotten past the part where he was tied up by a bunch of gangsters when Larxene and Luxord slipped through the double-doors at the entrance, walking out into the street and heading back toward the place where the Dimensional Hippievan was parked.

"So," Larxene asked, stopping Luxord just as they had gotten on the other side of the nearest abandoned warehouse, "You gave them our real names for a reason, right? I'd really rather not have a bunch of kids digging through my criminal record, y'know."

"Sorry about that," he answered, "But yes... I wouldn't have done so if I didn't have a good reason."

"And that reason is?"

"Didn't you notice how that Ven boy never once asked us about our powers?", he said, pointing out a fact that had been almost entirely lost on Larxene. "He wasn't blindfolded, you know. He saw that flash of electricity you made, heard you take out five armed thugs in a matter of seconds... he even saw me summon one of my cards."

Larxene frowned slightly. What was Luxord getting at?

"And yet, after all that, he didn't so much as ask how we did it," he continued. "Unlike nearly every other person we've encountered on these sorts of missions, he didn't seem to be amazed at all by that display of our abilities. Didn't you find that the least bit odd?"

She paused for a moment and went over the day's events in her head. Now that she thought about it, it _did _seem strange that a random boy who had been captured by weak, powerless thugs wasn't shocked or frightened by the very thought of people with superhuman power existing. At the very least, she would have expected someone of his age to be excited to meet "real-life superheroes" and find out that such things really are possible. Why had he not reacted at all?

"That kid's hiding something."

"Precisely," Luxord said, grinning slightly. She'd finally gotten it. "And I suspect his friends are more than they seem as well. They were traveling awfully light to be coming all the way out here from Europe, and the girl, Aqua... she gave me quite the look when we first showed ourselves."

"Wait a second," Larxene said, still taking in all of this information, "How the hell do you know they came from somewhere in Europe?"

Luxord sighed and shook his head slightly.

"Do you pay any attention at all to your surroundings, Larxene? The countries they had visited recently were clearly marked on their bags."

This caused her to grumble a little in annoyance, but still she chose not to start a fight; it's not like she would have had much to say if they did end up arguing, after all. She just shrugged a bit, abandoned the conversation altogether, and began to walk toward the Hippievan's location once again.

"We should probably head back pretty soon," she said, "Before they assume _we_ got kidnapped and have to send somebody else to bring _us _back."

Luxord chuckled a bit in response, but wisely chose to say nothing.

* * *

Back at the Organization's base, Xemnas had once again called an emergency meeting that all numbered members were required to attend. Roxas, of course, was exempt from this due to the fact that nobody had any idea where he actually was at the moment; Luxord and Larxene, unfortunately, were given no such exception, and after a few minutes of everyone murmuring amongst themselves the meeting was forced to start without them.

"As some of you may have already heard," Xemnas began, "We have once again discovered one who has encountered Fangirls and survived."

With that, Zexion motioned for the little boy he had found on the mountainside to come forward into the middle of the room. And come forward he did-_-_he actually _ran _into the room, sliding to a stop at the end and then posing ridiculously as if for a camera. With a cheesy grin, he glanced up at the black-cloaked men gathered in the chairs all around him; he recognized some who he had seen on TV before, when security cameras or someone's phone had caught brief glimpses of them exterminating Fangirls or fleeing the scene of a completed mission. Others he was seeing for the first time-Saix, for example, who was sitting with his arms crossed and looking down at him with a look of slight annoyance. Finally, he stared up and Xemnas and bowed slightly.

"This boy's name is Yoshi," the Superior continued, "He was attacked by a small group of Fangirls not far from here, and managed to outrun them until Zexion was able to step in and eliminate them."

While everyone was paying attention to the newcomer, Larxene and Luxord finally appeared in the entrance of the white room. Larxene managed to slip in unnoticed, zipping up into her seat so quickly that nobody would have seen much more than a black-and-yellow blur even if they had been watching. Luxord, on the other hand, was a bit less lucky; one of his shoes made a loud squeak against the floor just as he was about to leap up to his chair, and Xemnas immediately turned and glared in his direction for a moment before returning his attention to Yoshi.

"So, uh," the boy asked, looking up at Xemnas, "Do I get to join you guys? Do I? Or do I need to take some kinda test or something first? I bet there's an obstacle course! Or maybe a go-kart race, that'd be awesome!"

Xemnas paused for a moment before speaking, a bit stunned at this sudden outburst. Eventually, he chose to ignore the sheer ridiculousness of the boy's additional questions and simply answered his first one.

"Yes," he answered, "It has already been decided. You will be allowed to join Organization XIII."

The boy looked like he was about to start jumping up and down in place, his cheesy grin widening even further than before. He probably would have, if he had not been interrupted by Xemnas' voice once again.

"Luxord," he said, turning slightly to address the last member to arrive at the meeting. "I believe it's been a while since you have trained a new member, has it not?"

"Erm," the gamble stuttered, "Ah... yes... it has been a couple years since I've had my last trainee, if I remember correctly."

"I see. In that case," Xemnas continued, "You will be responsible for Yoshi's training. I expect you to begin his basic combat exercises within the week."

With that, the meeting was over, and everyone headed back to what they were doing previously. Larxene snickered a bit as she passed Luxord, but didn't say anything-_-_having to try and get that hyperactive little kid to concentrate on serious training would be bad enough as it was, and thanks to her own trainee she now had a little bit of empathy for those who had less-than-promising new members dumped on them.

"Sorry about that," Zexion said as he passed. "Who knows, maybe he won't be that much trouble after all. He already seems to move pretty fast, at least... so he might pick up combat skills a bit quicker than the average kid."

Luxord just sighed and shook his head. It was going to be a rough week.


	17. Treacherous Fraud

**CHAPTER 16**  
_~ Treacherous Fraud ~_

Zagan stood in front of the mirror in one of the base's many bathrooms, adjusting his glasses slightly so that his eyes were completely covered just the way he liked them. He then glanced down at the cellular phone in his hand for a second before slipping it into one of his pockets. The phone, of course, was an item that he was technically not allowed to have inside the Organization's headquarters; its ability to connect to the Internet meant that Fangirls could use it to transport themselves directly into the base unnoticed. Fortunately for him, nobody ever suspected that it would be possible for it to work the other way around.

After making sure that the phone was safely tucked away within his cloak's pocket where nobody could see it, he slipped out of the bathroom and turned to walk down the hallway toward the nearest staircase... until he was suddenly stopped by a tap on his shoulder.

"So... where have _you _been for the last hour?"

Zagan spun around, a bit startled, to find Larxene standing there glaring at him with her arms crossed in front of her chest.

"Err... well, what do you _think _somebody'd be doing in the bathroom for an hour?", he asked a bit rhetorically, waving his hands around a little. "I really should stop eating so much cheese, if y'know what I mean..."

He turned back around and continued to walk, but before he could even take three steps he found his path once again blocked by the blonde-haired woman, who now looked even more threatening than before.

"Not a single flush in that whole hour," she said, "And you didn't wash your hands, either. Do you really think I'm going to believe a weak excuse like that?"

"I'm in a hurry here," he said, attempting to get around Larxene but being blocked off every time. "I'll be wearing gloves on the job over at the Fangirl Detection System anyway, so who really cares if I didn't wash my hands just this once?"

Larxene growled slightly. Before she was able to continue interrogating Zagan, he shoved her to the side and took off running down the hallway toward the stairs. She grumbled to herself a bit as she watched him vanish behind the closing doors; she could have easily caught up with him, but at this point just following him would be pointless-_-_he probably suspected that she was on to him at this point, and if he was aware he was being followed he wouldn't let himself be caught in the middle of any suspicious activities. She had no idea what kind of suspicious activities he might be caught in the middle of, of course, but from what she'd seen recently she knew that _something _was going on.

As she headed over to the same flight of stairs that Zagan had used, she noticed that he had gone toward the stairs leading further down into the base, rather than upstairs toward the Fangirl Detection System's room.

_"Huh,"_ she thought, _"What's he up to now? Just throwing me off his trail?"_

* * *

Meanwhile, in the basement hallway right across from Vexen's lab, Zagan slowed his pace a bit as he approached Irael and D'aal, who were already leaning up against the wall and waiting for him to arrive. D'aal waved a bit as he approached, while Irael just nodded his head slightly, barely moving from his previous position at all.

"The gang's all here," Zagan said, snickering slightly. "So, any sign of the old man down here recently? Or are we all clear?"

D'aal shook his head.

"Nope," he answered, "Vexen hasn't set foot in his lab ever since that emergency meeting this morning. I suspect he's away on his lunch break right now."

"Hmph," Irael added, "Looks like we picked the right day for this, then."

Zagan nodded and grinned. He then took a few quick steps across the hallway and swung open the door to Vexen's lab, holding it open as his two partners-in-crime entered and then finally following after them. Upon entering the lab, he held out one hand and caused tiny strands of yellow-orange energy to drip from each of his fingertips, snaking along the floor below him and heading toward various sections of the lab's walls. As they hit walls, they suddenly sprouted into solid strands of fungus before quickly dissolving away. Irael and D'aal just watched, a bit confused, until finally one strand didn't stop at the wall-_-_it seemed to slip _under _the wall instead, pointing out a well-hidden secret doorway. Zagan grinned and turned toward the others before speaking.

"Who wants to bet we just found where Vexen keeps his 'secret' files?"

The line of energy expanded into a set of branching, tentacle-like fungal strands, wrenching the door aside and yanking it off of its hinges. It seemed that Zagan was no longer concerned about sneakiness at this point-_-_in his mind, he had already succeeded simply by finding the room.

"Okay you guys," he said to his companions, "Check that room out and make sure you grab the blueprints for the Fangirl Detection System... anything else that seems like it might come in handy, too. I'll have a box ready for that stuff when you guys finish up."

As Irael and D'aal passed into the lab's secret room and began their search, Zagan whipped his left hand upward toward a row of shelves next to some cabinets. Another strand of dull orangish energy flew outward, splitting apart into several seperate fungal roots and yanking a large, folded-up cardboard box and a variety of other things down from their places. He unfolded the box and set it down on the floor, then proceeded to put all of the spare parts and papers he had snatched from the high shelves inside of it. Once he was finished with that, he walked back over to the door and propped it open slightly with one foot before sending another barely-visible strand of fungus down the hallway toward the stairs leading even further down into the Organization's base.

A few minutes later, the strand returned with several wads of cash wrapped up in its fungusy grasp. Zagan pocketed them with a smirk, then turned to glance over into the secret room to see how much longer the other two would need.

"You guys found anything yet?"

D'aal held up a rolled-up blueprint, waving it slightly in the direction of the door; Irael glanced back for a moment and shrugged slightly while holding up a few folders' worth of miscellaneous scientific reports.

"This is definitely the Fangirl Detection System," the blue-haired elf said, waving the blueprint a bit more. "Haven't found anything related to the Dimensional Hippievan or anything else useful yet, unfortunately."

Zagan nodded, then motioned for them to leave Vexen's secret files alone for now and return back to the main lab.

"That should be enough for now," he said, "We can always make a second trip if there's anything really important we missed, right? Now let's get outta here before the old man comes home."

* * *

Naminé nearly jumped out of her seat at the sound of someone pounding on the outside of the energy barrier Xemnas had set up around the Fangirl Detection System's room, setting her notebook and pencil aside and then spinning around slowly in her chair. Larxene glared at her through the open (but still impenetrable) door, looking as if she had probably been "knocking" like that for quite a while before being noticed.

The little girl got up from her seat and walked over to the doorway, looking up at Larxene with a confused look on her face.

"What's going on?"

"Lemme guess," Larxene grumbled, "Zagan hasn't been in here, has he?"

Naminé shook her head.

"No, I haven't seen him around for over an hour now," she answered, "Sorry."

Larxene's expression suddenly brightened a bit.

"Nothing to apologize about," she said, grinning slightly, "I figured he wouldn't be here. Now you go back to your drawing, or whatever it is you do in here when there's nothing going on... I'll take care of Zagan."

Naminé barely had time to blink before Larxene was gone, charging off around the nearest corner in a yellowish blur. She stood there at the doorway for a few seconds, just trying to process what was going on. Larxene certainly seemed upset about something, but that wasn't uncommon for Larxene; the unusual thing was that she seemed to be following Zagan around. Naminé had never seen the two of them interact much at all, and she honestly couldn't remember if they had gotten along well or not. From the brief glimpse of Larxene's memories she had gotten just seconds before, Naminé knew that she had confronted him outside of one of the men's bathrooms earlier that day, but she couldn't figure out much more than that just from what little information she had.

Eventually, she decided to just return to her seat in the Fangirl Detection System room, figuring that no matter what was going on between Larxene and Zagan lately, there wasn't much she could do to help.

* * *

Zagan walked along at a steady pace, heading straight toward the base's main entrance. Following a few feet behind were Irael and D'aal, with the bulky silver-haired man carrying a cardboard box full of stolen equipment and blueprints from Vexen's lab. Zagan had planned their exit perfectly-_-_they had arrived at the base's front door at just the right time for Xigbar to have already left his guard post for the day, but before Xaldin had come in to take his place.

Unfortunately for Zagan, there was one thing they hadn't quite counted on. While Xigbar and Xaldin were nowhere to be seen, the cave that served as the Organization's mountain fortress was not quite abandoned.

"Heh," Larxene laughed slightly, standing in the doorway with her hands on her hips. "I figured you'd show up here sooner or later."

She took a few steps forward, summoning the full set of her knives with a brief flash of electricity. For a few moments, she glanced between Zagan and his two followers, then spoke once again.

"Irael and D'aal too, huh?", she asked, noticing the presence of the other two men for the first time. She also spotted the cardboard box in Irael's hands, and raised one eyebrow. "And a box... wonder what's in there?"

"Nothing for you to worry about," Zagan said, "You never liked Vexen much anyway, right? Why should you care if we decided to grab some of his old junk on the way out?"

"Oh, you're _leaving _now?", she said, waving one of her knives at the three of them in the same way one might wave a finger at naughty children. "You guys haven't forgotten that only the numbered members can leave without permission, have you?"

"We haven't forgotten anything, you little fool," Irael blurted out from behind the box.

"Yeah," Zagan said, "Lemme see, how can I put it simply? Oh yeah, I know... _we quit._"

"We're tired of how this Organization and its leaders do things," D'aal added, "And thanks to Zagan, we now know that this group isn't the only Fangirl extermination squad out there."

"That's right," Zagan said, stepping forward. "Now, it'd be nice if you'd cooperate just this once and get out of our way."

Larxene didn't budge an inch. Irael and D'aal knew right away that a fight was coming; the larger of the two men sat down the box he had been carrying and cracked his knuckles, while D'aal uncrossed his arms and shifted his feet slightly so that he would be ready to dodge incoming attacks. Zagan just smirked slightly and stepped back toward where his two followers were standing, as if guarding the box full of stolen papers.

"You know, normally I'd rather have a fair fight," he said, adjusting his glasses slightly, "But this time, we really can't risk having somebody show up and stick their nose into our business before it's all over."

D'aal and Irael both shifted into battle-ready stances, while Zagan continued to just stand there casually and stare at Larxene through his reflective-lensed glasses.

"Heh... you _really _think I'm afraid to fight all three of you guys at once?"

For a split-second, everyone stood completely motionless. And then, Larxene attacked, speeding across the floor of the room too quickly for any of her opponents to react and delivering a powerful kick to the side of D'aal's head. The elf went flying, crashing to the floor several feet away, while Larxene moved on to the other two. Holding several knives in each hand like claws, she swiped at Zagan several times, but he managed to narrowly dodge each blow before leaping backward out of her reach. Irael swung one of his massive fists at her, but she slipped underneath his arm in mid-swing and elbowed him in the back, throwing him off balance momentarily so that she could knock him aside with a blast of electricity.

"Well, that was a nice warm-up," Zagan said, glancing over to D'aal and Irael as the two of them picked themselves up off of the ground looking no worse for wear. "Now let's not waste any more time here. Go ahead and squish the little electric cockroach, guys."

D'aal nodded, then raised up his hands, causing them to glow with pale purplish energy. This unnatural-looking glow expanded to cover his entire body, then burst outward into a sickly-looking fog that swirled around him and filled the air with a noxious stench. Larxene stopped herself just short of entering the poison cloud, unsure of exactly what would happen if she got too close but knowing that it couldn't be good. She flung a few of her knives into the mist, but without being able to get a clear idea of exactly where her target was standing, she was having a hard time aiming; each of the weapons either missed or was knocked aside by one of the elf's hands before it could hit home.

Backing away a bit, she built up a powerful electric charge in her knives and then thrust her hands in D'aal's general direction, sending many small lightning bolts zig-zagging through the air toward him. Before they could get within a few feet of the elf, however, they were suddenly interrupted by a massive explosion that seemed to come out of nowhere, blowing away part of D'aal's poison cloud and nearly knocking Larxene off her feet. Steadying herself, she glared around at the three men, finally noticing that one of Irael's hands was still glowing slightly with strangely-colored energy.

"What the hell was _that?_"

"A small antimatter explosion," the silver-haired man said, raising his other hand and charging a small sphere of energy in it. "You should be familiar with the concept... all it takes is one tiny speck to make a blast like that."

He flung the energy orb in Larxene's direction, and she flung one of her knives to intercept it in midair before it got too close. As soon as the shell of energy that protected it was pierced by the knife's blade, the antimatter inside reacted with the air, causing another explosion that rattled the walls of the entrance and caused a few small rocks to come loose up above, toppling down the side of the mountain. The thrown knife was mangled beyond recognition in the process, but Larxene just dematerialized it and summoned another one to take its place.

Irael started to charge up another of his antimatter grenades, but before he could get much further than just raising his hand, he was sent flying backward by another blast of electricity. D'aal, still surrounded by the poison fog, held one hand in Larxene's direction and summoned his weapon; in a flash of purplish energy, a long, thin-bladed sword materialized in his hand. Larxene quickly dodged out of the way of several thrusts of the elf's blade, but was having a hard time figuring out how to counterattack thanks to the poison in the air around him. Rolling to the side, she flung two of her knives at him, but he knocked them out of the air with a single swipe of his blade.

"Damn poison gas," she muttered, "You're really starting to piss me off, y'know that?"

She threw the rest of her knives at him in rapid succession. D'aal tried to deflect them all, but was a bit overwhelmed by the sheer number; he snarled slightly in pain as a few of the weapons pierced his cloak and jabbed him in the gut and upper arm. Larxene grinned and summoned a new set of knives to replace the ones she had just thrown, but before she was able to get another attack in she was suddenly slammed into the floor by Irael's full weight colliding with her all at once. The stone beneath the two of them cracked a bit from the impact and before Larxene could squirm out from under him, the larger man grabbed her in a stranglehold and pinned her down. She tried to force him off phyiscally, but found herself unable to overcome his strength... until, that is, she decided to zap him.

"Gah!"

Irael yelled out in pain as Larxene's entire body suddenly became electrified, illuminating the entire room with flashes of yellow and white light. After several of these electric surges, Larxene broke out of his hold and flipped him forward over her shoulder, throwing him into the box of stolen papers and smashing one side of the cardboard into bits. As he staggered to his feet, Larxene flung a handful of knives at him, but just before they hit their mark they were stopped by a rubbery wall of fungus that had sprung up from the ground. She wasn't able to react quite quickly enough to avoid the rebounding knives, and soon afterward she was left with a few slashes in each side of her cloak. Cursing slightly, she glanced down at the new wounds-_-_they weren't much more than shallow scratches, but they were already bleeding a bit.

"Heh," Zagan laughed, "Weren't expecting that, were you?"

Larxene rolled her eyes. Irael charged forward past the wall of fungus and took another swing at her, but she dodged once again, flipping backward and then kicking him in the chest with both feet. He fell back into the wall of fungus, straining it with his weight; before he was able to get back up, his opponent jumped forward and kneed him in the chest, snapping the fungus behind him like a twig and sending him crashing to the floor.

D'aal took this opportunity to sneak in behind Larxene and stab her with his rapier, but she barely seemed to react to the new wound, simply turning her head toward him and grabbing onto the weapon with one hand. She pumped electricity into the blade, causing D'aal to be launched backward into the nearest wall. His weapon, still in hand, went flying along with him; though he still had enough power to keep it materialized, he apparently had been weakened too much to keep his poison mist in place, and it quickly dissipated from the air as he attempted to stand back up.

Finally, Zagan stepped forward to attack. He held up one hand and pointed in Larxene's direction, and almost instantly an enormous mushroom burst forth from the ground underneath her, sending her flying up into the air. She hit the ground rolling, narrowly avoiding three more mushrooms that erupted from below in rapid succession, and then leapt to her feet just in time to dodge another fungal assault. While she was distracted by the giant fungi, Zagan summoned his weapon and swung the weighted end in Larxene's direction. She noticed it at the last second and attempted to twist around in midair to avoid both it and the last of the mushrooms, but she wasn't quite fast enough and soon found herself wrapped up in the weapon's chains, both of her arms pinned to her sides.

She prepared to electrocute Zagan through his own weapon just like she had done to D'aal, but before she had a chance to do so she was suddenly pierced from behind once again-_-_and this time, she wasn't able to simply ignore the wound. The electricity she had already begun to charge in her hands sparked up for a moment and then dissipated, and her knives flickered slightly but seemed to barely hold on to their solid form.

It was at this very moment that another set of footsteps came into the room, stopping shortly after leaving the hallway that led into the entrance cave. Zagan immediately turned his head back toward the newcomer, and ended up staring straight into the dangerous-looking yellow eyes of the Organization's second-in-command himself.

"Zagan, Irael... D'aal... what is the meaning of this?"

D'aal immediately yanked his weapon free of Larxene's body, sending blood spilling out onto the ground behind her. He wiped it off with a white handkerchief, then dematerialized it before turning to Zagan and making a suggestion.

"Looks like a good time to retreat..."

Saix summoned his weapon in a flash of blue-white light, immediately shifting into a combat stance. Irael raised one of his hands and began to form another of his antimatter grenades, but Zagan grabbed him by the shoulder and stopped him before he was able to throw it.

"Hold on," he said, "We don't stand a chance against Saix just yet... let's put this one off for another time."

He dematerialized his weapon and quickly snatched up the box of stolen materials, passing it to Irael as the three traitors all took off running toward the door. Saix began to charge out after them, but stopped at the sight of Larxene lying on the floor, bloodied and nearly motionless. He paused for a moment and knelt down next to her, his eyes looking over her injuries before stopping on her face.

"Larxene, are you-_-_"

"I'm fine," she snapped, struggling into a sitting position, "It's just a scratch."

She coughed, clutching her chest in pain for a moment. They both noticed that a few tiny flecks of blood had flown out and splattered on the floor in front of her.

"...okay, maybe a punctured lung or something," she muttered, "But don't worry about me. Marluxia can patch this up in no time... you need to go track down those bastards before they get away."

Saix nodded. He lingered in front of Larxene for another second or so, then readied his weapon once again and charged out of the base's front entrance at full speed. He could still see the three further down the mountainside; as he drew closer to them, he noticed that they were no longer running away from him, instead standing perfectly still. Zagan reached into his pocket and pulled out some sort of shiny black object, which he fiddled with for several seconds before turning toward his two companions and nodding.

Saix took a flying leap down the mountain, landing just a few yards from the three cloaked men, but before he was able to get much closer to them the object in Zagan's hand began to glow with a strange greenish light. A swirling green portal, swarming with semi-transparent fragments of computer code, opened up in front of them, and all at once the three began to walk toward it. The scarred elf jumped at them with his claymore held high above his head, hoping to cut them down before they could escape, but they disappeared into the portal just moments before his impact and he only succeeded in splitting the large rock they had been standing on in half, sending shrapnel showering everywhere and rolling down the hillside.

He swung at the closing portal, but his weapon passed through it harmlessly as it shrunk away and vanished. For a few moments, he just stood there staring at the air in front of him, as if his eyes could bore a hole in space itself and force that strange portal to open up once again to allow him passage. Unfortunately, this never happened; it only succeeded in making Saix even more angry than before. His eyes glowed slightly with rage, and for a brief moment his X-shaped scar seemed to expand and become more jagged around the edges. He then dematerialized his weapon, snarled violently, and smashed a nearby rock with his bare hand, shattering it almost instantly.

Saix stood with his hand still clenched tightly into a fist, hanging his head in shame. It was then that he noticed something lying on the ground right in front of him-_-_the black, shiny device that Zagan had been holding just before he had escaped through the portal. After staring blankly at it for a few moments, he knelt down and plucked it from among the shattered rock; on closer inspection, he recognized it as a cellular phone, one of the fancy new kinds with a built-in keyboard that slid out from inside. It was a bit dented-up in a few places and the screen appeared to be broken, but other than that it was still in one piece.

"Hmm," he said to himself, coming down a bit from his previous enraged state. "Strange..."

He put the damaged phone into one of his pockets, then proceeded back up the mountain as quickly as he could, his thoughts rapidly shifting away from his hatred for the fleeing traitors and back to his worries about Larxene's condition.

* * *

"Zagan, Irael, and D'aal... so the traitors finally choose to reveal themselves," Vexen said, pacing back and forth. "Hmph... I should've seen that coming from Zagan, but I never would have suspected the other two. They always _seemed _to be fairly loyal members, at least."

Joining the old scientist in the hallway outside of the Organization's sickbay was Saix, who was leaning against one of the walls and occasionally glancing in through the door to check on Larxene. Marluxia was hard at work caring for her injuries, but he was far from finished; that stab wound through her lung would require a lot more than just some bandages and disinfecting agents.

"Yes... all three of them left after assaulting Larxene," Saix said, frowning a bit at the mere mention of the attack. "They disappeared into a strange green portal, which I believe Zagan somehow generated using _this._"

He reached into his pocket and produced the broken cell phone, handing it over to Vexen. The older man looked it over for a few moments, then made an odd face.

"This? This is nothing more than an ordinary cellular phone," he said, fiddling with it a bit more as if trying to be absolutely sure that there was anything abnormal about it. "I can't see how something like this could have generated any sort of portal, unless..."

Vexen's eyes widened as a disturbing thought came into his head. There was one very good reason why members of the Organization generally weren't allowed to have cell phones inside the base, particularly those that could connect to the Internet.

"Unless what?"

"Unless... he's somehow figured out how to replicate the process by which _Fangirls _travel through the Internet."

Vexen made sure that the phone was turned off, then carefully placed it inside a small plastic bag in order to preserve it for later. Then, slipping it into his pocket, he continued.

"I can't imagine how he would have ever figured out such a thing," he said, pacing back and forth once again, "Even in my experiments with live Fangirls, I was unable to learn much about their methods of travel, aside from the obvious fact that they can use any sort of computerized device with Internet access as an entry point."

"That would explain the appearance of the portal," Saix said. "Swirling colors and computer code... just like when Fangirls appear from computers during a swarm."

"Indeed. I'll have to get this device working again," Vexen said, reaching into his pocket for a moment and making absolutely sure that the phone was well-secured. "If Zagan really was able to decipher the Fangirls' transportation methods, then he's made one of the most important discoveries in the history of the Organization..."

With that, he rushed off down the hallway, no doubt heading toward his lab in the basement to work on repairing and testing Zagan's discarded phone. Once again, Saix was left alone in the hallway, standing motionlessly and watching as Marluxia continued to work on repairing Larxene's injuries. The surgery to fix her damaged lung seemed to have been finished at this point, as he had moved on to cleaning and bandaging her less-serious wounds (most of which had already stopped bleeding by this point.) The blue-haired elf sighed and stepped away from the door, finally convinced that Larxene was going to pull through without any problems; now, his thoughts drifted to the other thing that had been bothering him-_-_D'aal.

Saix didn't understand how someone he had trained himself could have betrayed the Organization in such a way. He had always prided himself on his unwavering loyalty to Xemnas, and to Organization XIII as a whole; he thought for sure that anyone he trained, especially a long-time member like D'aal, would have inherited that trait to at least _some _degree. Had he made a mistake somewhere along the line, or was this simply D'aal's true nature finally revealing itself? Was Zagan's influence somehow responsible for this turn of events?

He frowned slightly, not sure what to think of the situation. He thought back to when D'aal had first joined-_-_he had been found on the outskirts of a city, seriously injured from an attempt to fight off a group of Fangirls on his own. It had always reminded Saix of how he himself was brought into the Organization; after he and his brother had moved to Japan (which, as he later found out, was so that his brother Braig-_-_who soon took on the codename "Xigbar"-_-_could have easier access to the Organization's base), he had been attacked by Fangirls and managed to escape into a nearby forested area. Unfortunately, the Fangirls quickly tracked him down, and he was forced to try and fight. He didn't remember much after that point, but he was later told by both Xemnas and Xigbar that he had managed to summon his weapon for the first time that day, giving him the power to destroy more than a dozen Fangirls before finally being overwhelmed and forced into unconsciousness by the life-draining touch of the creatures.

_"This is ridiculous,"_ he thought, shaking off the thoughts about D'aal and his past. _"I'm sitting here moping about something I had no control over..."_

He realized that he was starting to sound a little too much like Axel on a bad day; the very thought of it disturbed him enough to temporarily distract him from previous annoyances, and he walked off down the hall away from the sickbay in search of some work to do that would serve as a more permanent distraction.


	18. Crossover

**CHAPTER 17**  
_~ Crossover ~_

"You... no, it can't be," the old man said, slowly standing up from his seat with a look of shock coming over his face. "Those black cloaks... you're..."

He unconsciously reached for a cylindrical object on his belt, gripping it like the handle of a sword as he shifted into a cautious defensive stance. His weapon was only an old prototype-_-_black and dulled with age, in contrast to the shiny metallic handles of his followers' Keyblades-_-_but he supposed it would have to do.

"Don't worry," one of the men said, raising his hands in front of him almost as if begging for mercy. "We're no enemies to you... Ansem the Wise."

"Yes," another said, "Save your weaponry for the Fangirls, please. We mean you no harm."

The largest of the three men said nothing, only nodding slightly. Or, at least, it seemed like he had probably nodded; it was difficult to tell with the shadows cast by his hood still concealing most of his face. The old man released his grip on his weapon, but remained ready; he still didn't trust these cloaked strangers, whether they had good intentions or not.

"I'm willing to believe that you mean me no harm," Ansem said, shifting slightly as he looked over the three, "But it would be far easier for me to say such a thing with certainty if you would remove those accursed hoods."

The three nodded in unison, then reached up and pushed their hoods back away from their faces. Ansem was relieved to see only total strangers beneath them-_-_a reunion with those who he had once worked with was not something he was looking forward to.

"Hey, why stop there?" the man in the reflective glasses said, "I know I've gotten sick of wearing these things after all those years... let's ditch the cloaks."

The others nodded, then all three proceeded to tear off the long, black garments as quickly as they could, as if they couldn't wait to get out of them. Before long, a pile of discarded cloaks had appeared in the corner of the room, and the three stood before Ansem's desk wearing little more than black pants and worn-looking white undershirts (or, in the case of the blue-haired elf, a traditional elven shirt which was brownish in color.)

"Now... I suppose you're wondering what brings us here," the blue-haired elf said.

"Well, yes," Ansem stuttered, "But before you get to that... why don't you begin by introducing yourselves?"

"Of course," the man in the glasses said, slapping himself in the face lightly. "How could I forget something like that? My name is Zagan Xavier Baldts, and my companions here are Irael Sindrisson and D'aal."

D'aal bowed slightly, while Irael simply stood motionlessly in the same position as before.

"And we've come all this way here... to join you."

* * *

"Man," Demyx groaned, "This's been a rough month for the Organization, huh?"

Despite the circumstances, it was a fairly typical day for Demyx. He was in the one of the Organization's recreation rooms, the same place he usually hung out when he wasn't busy with anything; he had a can of some sort of fruit-flavored soda in one hand and his sitar propped up against the wall behind him, occasionally strumming a few bars of some familiar-sounding song when boredom got the best of him. Sitting on a large couch on the other side of the room were several non-numbered members, each of which nodded slightly in response.

"Yeah," a large bald man said between sips of soda, "We're down to eleven numbered members, with Roxas gone and Larxene injured... hasn't been this bad in a while."

"Not to mention the situation with Zagan, Irael, and D'aal," Roberto said, scratching his head slightly through his mask. "About the only way it could get much worse now is if there was a-_-_"

As if right on cue, a Fangirl alarm suddenly blared through the base's sound system, causing Demyx to almost jump out of his seat. Roberto sighed, then slowly stood up from his place on the couch and stretched a bit before heading toward the door. At first, Demyx looked a bit confused. After a few seconds, however, a look of realization suddenly came over his face-_-_if they went ahead and volunteered to go and deal with the swarm, they wouldn't have to worry about Saix or someone else dragging them into it (which, of course, meant that they wouldn't get yelled at, which was always a welcome change for Demyx.)

The young musician and the two burly men he had trained were joined by Tundo, who sat his bag of chips aside to follow them as they rushed out into the hallway and toward the Fangirl Detection System room. When they got there a few minutes later, they found it all but abandoned; with Zagan having defected, little Naminé was left to operate the computer systems alone, and everyone could tell that she was a bit more worn-out than usual.

"Hey, you got the Hippievan ready?", Tundo shouted through the barrier that prevented them from entering the room. As they had recently discovered, apparently Xemnas had made the wall of energy in front of the door a bit _too _effective; in addition to keeping unauthorized members from entering, it sometimes even blocked out or muffled their voices if they didn't speak up enough.

The white-clad girl turned in her chair and nodded slightly toward them, pushing a button on the console in front of her which stopped the incessant ringing of the Fangirl alarm. Demyx smiled and waved goodbye to her before heading off down the hallway in the opposite direction, his three friends struggling to keep pace with him as he went.

* * *

Before long, the group had reached their destination, and the Dimensional Hippievan returned to normal space and rolled to a (somewhat more sudden than necessary) stop in a rough gravel parking area. Demyx was the first to swing open his door and hop out of the vehicle, taking a good look at his surroundings; they had apparently arrived in a forested area near a lake, which he soon discovered (after reading a nearby sign) was some sort of state park. He didn't recognize the area, but after glancing at an information booth nearby he was able to determine that they were indeed somewhere on the east coast of the United States.

"I would say this isn't too far from home," he said, glancing back toward the others as they also made their way out of the van, "But... uh... it kinda is. Like, opposite side of the country and all, y'know?"

Tundo snickered a bit, then followed Demyx's lead and took a look around. There were no Fangirls to be seen just yet, but that was typical of extermination missions; it wasn't often that the nearest suitable parking area to a swarm was right in the middle of it. Roberto and the other muscular man walked across to the other side of the parking area, spotting a few campers in the distance but no Fangirls.

"Looks like they're not too close by this time," the bald man said, raising one hand to his eyes to block out the sun's glare as he paced over to the edge of the lake and looked out across it. "I guess this's gonna be one of _those _missions..."

"Yes, I feel your pain," Roberto said, slapping him on the back slightly. "But you know what they say... sometimes, one must go and find adventure rather than sitting and waiting for it to come to you!"

"Yeesh," Tundo said, shuddering a bit, "Fangirls ain't exactly the kind of 'adventure' I'd wanna go lookin' for, if y'know what I mean."

After several more minutes passed with no sign of Fangirls, Demyx shrugged and decided to take charge for once. He gathered the group up in the parking lot beside the Hippievan, then started pointing in various directions, letting each of the lower-ranking members of the group know where he wanted them to go.

"Okay, Roberto," he said, "You search the beach around this lake for any sign of Fangirls. Kick up a sandstorm or something if you spot anything fishy."

The wrestler nodded, then cracked his neck and his knuckles before taking off running toward the beach's dirty yellowish sand.

"Tundo and Toivo, you guys start checking out the rest of the park," he said, waving one hand all over, "Y'know, this part with all the trees and camping spots and stuff."

And finally, just before the two ran off to begin their search, he pointed to himself.

"And me... I'll handle the lake, and those rocky places over on the other side. Sound good to you guys?"

Toivo nodded, the sunlight glancing off of his bald head for a moment and making Demyx flinch slightly, while Tundo just made a slight grunt of approval. With that, all three headed off in their own directions, beginning the search for the as-of-yet unseen Fangirl swarm.

Demyx took off running down the slope of a nearby hill, jumping over a park bench and landing in a patch of sand. He stopped for a moment and looked out over the lake, spotting a few small boats in the distance but nothing resembling any Fangirl he had ever seen. Shrugging slightly, he continued running, crossing the sand and ending up on a rickety old wooden dock; when he reached the end of it, he simply continued running as if nothing had changed, his feet crossing the mostly-calm waters just as easily as solid ground. This was possible partly due to Demyx's water-elemental powers, of course, but his speed didn't hurt either-_-_he was one of the quickest runners in the Organization after Larxene, after all.

For several minutes, he ran back and forth across the surface of the water, being careful to stay far enough away from the boats that nobody would spot a spiky-haired twenty-something casually walking on water. Eventually he came to a stop at the top of a dam on the far side of the lake, hopping out of the water and resting on the concrete walls of the structure. It was then that he heard a scream from somewhere nearby, followed by several more-_-_and, just as he had suspected, the telltale giggle of Fangirls.

"Crap, sounds like they're pretty close," he mumbled to himself, looking all around in an attempt to lock on to the source of the sounds. "Maybe up there?"

"Up there," of course, was a nearby hill where he could just barely spot the shapes of playground equipment rising above the rocks and small trees that surrounded them. He hopped down from the side of the dam and propelled himself upward on a massive column of water, quickly leveling with the hill and seeing that there were, indeed, a few dozen Fangirls crawling around and terrorizing the children. He continued to rise even higher on the jet of water, hoping that the other three would spot it and head toward his location, but when he saw a Glomper Fangirl pounce on a 12-year-old and knock him to the ground, Demyx couldn't just stand by and watch anymore; he had to jump down and do something about it.

And jump down he did, summoning his sitar in midair and slamming it down onto the offending Fangirl, crushing it instantly as he landed. The impact not only shattered the Fangirl but sent mulch and dust flying everywhere, showering the slightly-traumatized little boy lying on the ground nearby with wood chips.

"Oh yeah!", he shouted, pumping one fist in the air while holding his unusual weapon with the other, "That's what I call 'El Kabong!'"

As always, the sudden appearance of an Organization member immediately drew the attention of the Fangirls. Many Glompers came out of the woodwork, sometimes literally slipping out from behind the wooden structures of the playground equipment; joining them were several other types of Fangirls, including some Demyx didn't immediately recognize. They wore glasses, or at least seemed to be wearing glasses; their eyes, instead of being two dots, were represented by the number eight, plastered sideways across their strange text-symbol faces. One of them stopped as it noticed Demyx's presence, then turned and gave him a thumbs-down.

"Hee hee hee," the creature laughed creepily, "Demyx? What a wimp!"

The musician immediately snapped his head in the strange Fangirl's direction, looking a bit offended.

"Hey!"

This Fangirl was soon accompanied by several others of the same type, which chattered amongst themselves for a few moments as if debating some important issue. Amongst the buzz of squeaky, disturbing voices, Demyx could occasionally make out a few words; sometimes the names of fellow Organization members, other times brief descriptions of attacks or physical features, and occasionally angry-sounding bursts of gibberish. Eventually, however, it seemed that the group of Fangirls had reached a consensus.

"Yep," one of them said, "Demyx sure is weak!"

"Even Zexion could beat him!"

"How'd a guy like him get a numbered rank anyway?"

"I bet he can't even fight!"

Demyx ordinarily wasn't a very angry person. In fact, it took a lot to really push him over the edge... but these Fangirls had gone too far. Sure, he didn't especially like fighting; he was a non-violent person by nature, and simply having superpowers wasn't going to change that. He probably didn't train _quite_ as much as he really should, either. But when he was forced into a situation where fighting was the only answer, he most certainly _could._

He readied his sitar and raised one hand toward the group of Fangirls, preparing to show them just how wrong they were, when suddenly all four of them simultaneously made a thumbs-down motion in his direction. A barely-visible ripple of energy flew through the air and washed over him, and he flinched slightly, expecting some sort of attack... but, as far as he could tell, nothing had happened.

"Uh," he blurted out, not sure what had just happened. "What the heck was _that _supposed to be?"

Blinking a few times, he shrugged off his momentary confusion and picked up where he had left off-_-_taking care of these annoying new Fangirls. He raised one of his hands and plucked a few notes on his sitar with the other, then launched a massive sphere of water straight toward the line of Fangirls.

But something was wrong. His water orb seemed to travel more slowly through the air than normal; its shape rippled a bit too much around the edges, as if it was not quite stable. The Fangirls easily hopped aside as it reached the spot they had been standing in previously, and when it exploded on impact with the ground, it didn't destroy them even though they were standing barely a foot away-_-_it only stunned them a bit and got their clothes wet.

Demyx's jaw dropped. If he had been Vexen, he would have muttered something under his breath about how that attack only had a fraction of the power he had intended for it to have; being Demyx, of course, he worded his reaction a bit differently.

"Whoa... what the hell? That can't be right..."

He tried a few more attacks, but all of them turned out just as badly. Jets of water erupting from the ground sent Fangirls flying upward, but not high enough or with enough force to cause any significant damage to them. Exploding water orbs never seemed to explode quite the way they normally were supposed to. And finally, when he attempted to generate water clones of himself and send them after the Fangirls, they couldn't quite maintain their shape and collapsed into puddles after just a few steps.

"Heh, he still hasn't figured it out," one of the Fangirls blurted out. The creature started giggling evilly, soon joined by all three of its companions (and even a few of the Glompers and other Fangirls, which at this point were just sitting on the sidelines watching.)

"Hee hee hee!", another one laughed, "He must be almost as dumb as he is weak!"

Before the others of the group could make any comments of their own, they suddenly found Demyx charging at them with his sitar held overhead, preparing to smash them with the heavy instrument as if it were an oversized club. One of the Fangirls didn't get out of the way quite fast enough and was repeatedly clobbered, finally shattering into green light and computer code after half a dozen hits. He breathed heavily for a few seconds, then suddenly felt rejuvenated; it was as if destroying one of the Fangirls restored a bit of his strength.

Tundo, Roberto, and Toivo arrived just in time to see Demyx take out a second Fangirl by launching it into the side of a tree with a well-aimed blast of water; a third member of the group fell prey to a barrage of water orbs, the force of which was enough to send the fourth of the strength-draining Fangirls flying forward several yards and landing face-first in a muddy puddle.

It was this moment that Roberto chose to get involved, flying in from the side and slamming into the creature's back with his full weight put behind his elbow. The Fangirl shattered almost instantly, leaving the big Mexican lying in a puddle and Demyx standing in front of him blinking.

"Dude," Demyx said, "I _had _that one..."

"Eh, there's plenty more where that came from," Tundo said, pointing in the direction of the playground. The Glompers were now on the move, while a few of the more unusual-looking Fangirls seemed to be staying in the back away from the action.

"First Shifters, and now... whatever those things in the back are," Toivo said, wiping a bit of sweat off from his forehead, "Well, at least those Glompers won't give us any surprises."

Tundo charged forward into the crowd of oncoming Glompers, slamming several at a time with his hammer. Roberto soon joined him, kicking up a small sandstorm that showered the creatures with bits of rock and wood chips and caused them to slow their charge as they flailed around trying to rub the sand out of their eyes. While most of the swarm was distracted, Toivo clenched his fists, causing pale blue-green energy to ripple across his forearms for a moment before solidifying into his weapons-_-_a pair of gauntlets, each with a single large spike in the shape of the cross-points of the Organization's symbol.

As Roberto's sandstorm began to clear, he and Toivo both joined Tundo in his charge through the Fangirl ranks. Roberto shattered Glompers with his bare hands, crushing some in powerful chokeholds and slamming others into their fellow Fangirls; Toivo fended off groping claws with one gauntlet while smashing the spiked edge of the other into any Fangirl that dared to come within his long reach. Demyx just stood back and watched for a while, occasionally flinging a small blast of water to finish off a fleeing Glomper, until he noticed that some of the stranger-looking Fangirls on the other side of the playground had begun to move. He launched himself up into the air on a jet of water, easily clearing the warzone below him and dropping down just a few feet in front of the other Fangirls.

He had never seen such strange-looking Fangirls as these-_-_they seemed to be wearing bits and pieces of several different costumes that didn't quite match, carrying weapons and other objects that didn't seem to go along with any of them and with bizarre combinations of hair colors that made those of other Fangirls look relatively normal. One of them seemed to be wearing an old brown fedora, while another had something like a ninja's headband wrapped awkwardly around its face. Even after all the Fangirls Demyx had seen in his time with the Organization, he couldn't help but be a little shocked at just how _weird _these ones were.

"Whoa," he blurted out, "What the heck _are _these things?"

Not longer after his landing, the Fangirls noticed him and began to back away from his location, waving their hands around in all sorts of mysterious patterns as they went. He raised up one of his hands and prepared to launch a sphere of water in their direction, but before he was ready, several small shapes appeared out of nowhere between him and his targets.

The first to appear, some sort of yellowish rodent with pointed ears, growled at him and then charged forward, sparks of electricity beginning to form around its body as it ran. He quickly tossed the water-ball in his hand toward the Fangirls and then hopped out of the way of the strange little creature they had somehow created, easily avoiding its charge. It skidded to a halt a few feet behind him, then turned and squeaked loudly before firing a bolt of electricity in his direction.

Fortunately, the yellow rat didn't seem to be particularly powerful; the electrical attack made a direct hit, but didn't manage to accomplish much aside from making Demyx flinch slightly. Before it could react and attack again, he kicked it out of the way, causing it to squeak one more time before vanishing with a flash of greenish energy in mid-flight. It was about this time that Tundo, Roberto, and Toivo had just finished with the rest of the swarm, rushing over to join Demyx in the battle against the few who were left. Tundo paused for a few moments as he saw the steadily-growing group of creatures in front of the musician, then immediately blurted out the first thing that came to mind.

"Uh... are those frickin' _Pokémon?_"

Demyx turned and took a closer look at the creatures the Fangirls had summoned, finding that they did indeed resemble more-realistic versions of the cartoonish monsters from that popular video game series. The one he had just defeated without much effort had been a Pikachu; creatures which resembled a Bulbasaur, a Charmander, a Squirtle, and nearly a dozen more had also appeared, and all of them were now approaching the black-cloaked group.

"Heh... I don't know what kind of Fangirls those are," Toivo said, "But they're obviously not too bright if they thought a bunch of scrawny little critters like these would have a chance against us."

He charged into the still-growing swarm of pint-sized monsters at full speed, slashing away at some with his bladed gauntlets and trampling others beneath his feet as he went. None put up much of any resistance; within seconds, he had cleared a path through the Pokémon and reached the Fangirls behind them. Roberto stomped the ground in front of him, causing a spray of sand to kick up and blast the remaining creatures in the face; while they were stunned from that attack, Tundo finished them off with a single swing of his hammer that generated a shockwave powerful enough to topple nearly all of them at once. The rest of the Organization members joined Toivo in front of the group of Fangirls, with Roberto taking the lead.

"So," Roberto asked, grabbing one of the awkwardly-clothed Fangirls by the collar and lifting it up off the ground with one hand, "Do you Fangirls have any more tricks up your sleeves?"

The creature shrieked incoherently for a moment and then began to rapidly flail its arms around, but the Mexican wrestler didn't give it time to finish whatever it was trying to do-_-_before anything could happen, he pulled back his free hand and slammed it in the face with a powerful punch, sending the Fangirl flying backward and smashing into the side of a picnic table. Shortly afterward, it slumped to the ground and shattered into computer code, causing the few remaining Pokémon to disappear along with it.

Toivo took a swing at the tallest of the four remaining Fangirls, but the creature blocked his attack with a massive sword that seemed to be wrapped up in bandages. He raised up both hands and attempted to slam the Fangirl with both of his gauntlet spikes, but once again his attack was stopped by the oversized sword; he struggled against the creature for a few seconds, succeeding in pushing it back a bit, before being flung backward as the creature shoved against him with the flat side of the blade.

"Oof!"

He rolled a bit to soften his fall, then immediately hopped back to his feet. Roberto glanced over at him for a moment, then returned his attention to the smaller Fangirl in front of him, which swung a sparkly pink wand-like object at his head. He caught it just in time to avoid getting smacked in the face, then yanked it out of the Fangirl's hands and gave it a taste of its own medicine. After a few strikes, the wand shattered, producing a shockwave of pinkish energy that sent the Fangirl flying back and showered the battleground with iridescent glitter for a few moments.

The wrestler glanced down at the broken-off pink shaft of the weapon in his hand, then shuddered a bit before tossing it aside. Realizing that the Fangirl he had repeatedly smashed in the face wasn't quite finished yet and had started to stand up once again, he charged off after it, passing Tundo right as he crushed the Fangirl he had been fighting with a single overhead slam. Demyx clubbed another one of the Fangirls in the face with the top of his sitar, sending it staggering back a few steps but not quite managing to knock it out. When it began to wave its hands in his direction, he followed up with a jet of water that threw it off balance and then finished it off with another series of exploding water-balls.

Toivo glanced back over his shoulder for a moment, noticing that Roberto had just smashed the second-to-last Fangirl with a stomp to the back before it could stand. Just before it began to glow green and shatter, he turned back toward the tallest of the Fangirls to find that it had set its sword aside and had begun waving its hands around in the air in a way that looked oddly familiar. He pulled back one fist to knock it aside with a punch before it could finish, but he found his fist suddenly halted by the powerful grip of a black-gloved hand that had spontaneously appeared in front of him. He prepared for another attack, this time with his bladed gauntlet, but he suddenly stopped in mid-swing when he saw just who it was that had stopped his punch.

"No way..."

Hovering about a foot off the ground in front of him was a tall man in one of the Organization's trademark cloaks, with long silvery hair spilling out over his shoulders and orange eyes that almost seemed to glow. As far as Toivo could tell, he was staring right into the face of none other than the Organization's Superior himself.

* * *

Back at the Organization's base, Xemnas walked toward the Fangirl Detection System's room, accompanied by Vexen and Zexion. Upon reaching the room's only door, he raised up his hands, causing the barrier of energy in front of the entrance to become fully visible; clenching one hand into a fist, he forced the energy to dissipate into nothingness, once again opening the room up to anyone who wished to take a look at the system's operations. Vexen's mouth hung open a bit, his eye twitching slightly.

"Why did you..."

"Now that the traitors have revealed themselves," he said, interrupting the old scientist, "This barrier no longer serves any purpose."

Zexion nodded slightly as he flipped through the pages of his book, adding a brief note onto one of them before shutting and dematerializing it once again. He then headed into the room, followed shortly afterward by Vexen and Xemnas. Naminé, alerted by the sound of voices that were not partly muffled by the barrier, had already spun around in her chair and was now staring up at them, not exactly sure why they had made such an unexpected visit to the Fangirl Detection System.

"What's going on?"

"Ah, nothing especially urgent at the moment," Vexen said, taking a seat in front of the Fangirl Detection System. He was soon joined by Zexion, while Xemnas remained standing behind the three of them.

"We simply came to help with the Fangirl Detection System for a while," Zexion added, "With Zagan gone, I'm sure your workload has been a bit disproportionate lately... especially for someone your age."

"Speaking of work," Xemnas said, glancing over the computer screens, "Who was sent out to exterminate the swarm that triggered the last Fangirl alarm?"

Naminé turned toward the screen for just a moment, and immediately was shocked at what she saw. While only a single pink dot remained on the map, something was definitely wrong-_-_only four members of the Organization had been sent out in the Dimensional Hippievan, but the monitor clearly showed _five _of the silvery emblems that represented them.

"Demyx," she said, turning back toward the Organization's leader, "And he took Toivo, Roberto, and Tundo along with him, but..."

"If only those four left in the van... who else could possibly be out there?", Vexen asked, glancing at the screen to take a closer look. "Can you zoom in any closer on that area of the map?"

Naminé nodded, hitting a few buttons on the keyboard so that a small section of the map where the lone Fangirl and five Organization members were located was magnified several times. The symbols of each of the Organization members, previously packed a bit too close to each other to be clearly visible, were now separated enough that everyone could get a good look at them.

Vexen stood up, slamming both of his hands palm-down onto the table in front of him. He couldn't believe what he was seeing, but there it was-_-_the Roman numeral "I" in the center of one of the five Organization symbols, signifying that Xemnas was apparently in two places at once.

"Impossible," he muttered, "That... that just can't be..."

Zexion stared at the screen, blinking occasionally, and then turned toward Xemnas.

"Unless you've somehow managed to figue out how to be two places at once," he said, "Something _very _strange is going on here."

"I'll try reloading the map," Naminé said, typing away at the keyboard in front of her in an attempt to correct any problems it might be having. "This could just be some kind of glitch, right?"

"That's certainly a possibility," Vexen muttered, "But even when not working properly, the system has never gone so far as to display an Organization member's symbol when that member wasn't present... if this _is_ just a glitch, something must have gone _horribly _wrong."

For a few seconds, the map went blank; Naminé pushed another button, and then it began to load all over again, slowly scanning the area and adding in every feature of the landscape. When it was finished, however, nothing had changed-_-_the pink dot and five Organization symbols were all still present, though the last remaining Fangirl seemed to have backed away from the rest.

"Still there," Zexion said, "Which means..."

* * *

Toivo slowly returned to his feet, clutching his shoulder. He had just been flung twenty feet by someone who for all the world appeared to be Xemnas, slamming into a seesaw and nearly bending it in half with the force of the impact. Roberto and Tundo were still standing in defensive postures several yards away from the silver-haired man, while Demyx stood almost completely still aside from the occasional shiver. Needless to say, nobody had any idea what the heck was going on.

"X-Xemnas?", Demyx blurted out, "What... what are _you _doing here?"

"Isn't it obvious?", he answered, taking a few steps toward the black-cloaked group. "I have deemed the four of you to be unworthy of continued existence. You have failed me too many times, Demyx... now, prepare to be punished."

He held out both hands, causing a red light to glow around them for a moment before extending out into the shape of a pair of glowing blades. These energy-blades hummed slightly as their owner shifted into an offensive stance, then suddenly sped forward in Demyx's direction.

Demyx yelped and launched himself straight up into the air, narrowly avoiding a slash from the Xemnas-lookalike's blades of red energy. He flipped back down to the ground, landing on his feet just outside of his opponent's reach, then rapidly propeled himself backward with another burst of water, trying to keep as much distance between him and the Superior as possible. He wasn't yet sure _why _Xemnas was so intent on attacking him, or even if this really was Xemnas at all, but he could already tell that if he wasn't careful, there was a chance he wouldn't make it back home in one piece.

Tundo and Roberto charged at Xemnas from behind, attempting to catch him off guard, but found their attempts easily thwarted-_-_when Roberto attempted to leap onto his back and catch him in a hold, he shifted position just enough to avoid the attack and then raised his energy-blades in preparation for a counterattack. Tundo jumped into the path of the attack just in time to keep Roberto from taking a direct hit in the back, blocking the shafts of red energy with the pole of his hammer and gritting his teeth as he struggled to hold back Xemnas' overwhelming strength.

"Hey, over here!", Demyx shouted, gathering water into several small orbs in his hands. When the false Xemnas glanced in his direction for a moment, he pelted him with the explosive balls of water, knocking him away from Tundo.

The chubby man breathed a sigh of relief, then charged toward Xemnas once again while he was momentarily distracted. He swung back his hammer in preparation to strike, but before his attack could connect, he was smashed in the gut by a powerful spinning kick that knocked all the air out of his lungs and sent him crashing back to the ground. His hammer flickered for a moment, but managed to hold its shape; he wasn't quite out of the fight yet.

Roberto, standing back up and dusting himself off, growled and slammed one fist into the ground in front of him. At the point of impact, sand and small rocks began to swirl about rapidly, forming a tornado-like funnel that rose a dozen feet above the ground. When the wrestler stood back up, he thrust forward both of his hands, and immediately the vortex of sand went flying off toward Xemnas. It hit head-on, but immediately Roberto could tell that something was wrong-_-_the swirling sand seemed to stop a few feet short of its target, though he couldn't get a clear look through the cloud of dust to see why.

"A pitiful attempt," a deep, creepy voice from within the sandstorm said. A shockwave from inside suddenly cleared away all of the sand, revealing that Xemnas had surrounded himself in a barrier of swirling pale-blue light; he was completely unharmed.

Before Roberto could react, part of the spherical shield condensed into a bolt of energy and slammed into his chest, scorching through the fabric of his cloak in an instant and sending him flying backward, leaving a trail of steam and a bit of blood behind as he went. He landed in a pile of wood chips and struggled to get up for a few seconds, but the pain in his chest was just too much for him and he slipped away into unconsciousness.

Xemnas slowly held up both of his hands, and the energy that made up his barrier began to split itself apart to generate more and more energy bolts which flew off in all directions. Tundo had just managed to get up again when he spotted one of them speeding toward him, barely managing to deflect it with the head of his hammer. When three more blasts came in his direction, he was forced to run and dive to the ground to avoid them; the stray beams tore through the scenery behind him, digging deep gouges out of the dirt and shattering trees as they went.

Demyx narrowly avoided a barrage of the same energy beams, running and leaping to keep ahead of them as they seemed to focus in on his position more and more. Toivo attempted to block one of the blue bolts by crossing his gauntleted arms in front of himself as it approached, but the sheer force of the impact shattered his weapons along with a few bones in his wrist; he fell to the ground several feet back, still barely clinging to consciousness but no longer strong enough to get up and fight again.

Finally, Xemnas' barrier seemed to run out of power, and the barrage of lasers stopped. Demyx, who was now breathing a bit heavier than usual, stopped running and began to furiously pluck away at his sitar's strings, causing an unusual song to fill the air and watery shapes to begin to rise out of the ground. The musician had not used this technique in a while, but desperate times called for desperate measures; if anything he had was capable of taking out someone as powerful as Xemnas, it was this. As the seemingly-unstoppable cloaked man slowly walked toward Demyx with his ethereal blades crossed in front of him, he focused as much of his power as he could on generating as many water clones as possible. Before long, he was surrounded by a hundred translucent, featureless copies of his own form, dancing about him in tight formation.

He raised one hand and pointed in Xemnas' direction, then gave a deceptively humorous-sounding command.

"Dance, water, dance!"

All at once, the legion of liquid Demyxes turned their attention toward the approaching enemy, summoning their own watery sitars and charging toward him at full speed. The first few clones were easily slashed apart with a few swipes of Xemnas' weapons, but as more and more of them kept coming, he found it harder and harder to keep up with them all. Before long, the Xemnas that the strange Fangirl seemed to have created was pinned to the ground by dozens of water clones, which gradually began to meld together into a single massive dome of water with the silver-haired man trapped, seemingly helpless, in its center. As powerful as Xemnas was, he was still a living being-_-_and Demyx knew that he was just as capable of drowning as anyone else.

At first, Demyx's desperation attack seemed to have worked. For about a minute, he spotted bubbles in the dome of water; after that, they slowed to a stop. He had just begun to take a few steps toward the watery trap when he noticed a strange light shining from inside of it, joined shortly afterward by a slight bulge in the top of the dome.

"Aw, crap..."

Demyx dove to the ground just in time to avoid a barrage of lasers that shredded through the dome of water, evaporating half of it and sending the rest flying everywhere before sinking back into the ground and adding a few more shallow puddles of mud to the playground's landscape. When he stood back up, he found himself looking straight at a rather wet and angry-looking Xemnas, whose face had twisted into a snarl and whose eyes almost seemed to be glowing brighter than before.

"Fool," Xemnas said, seemingly trying to force himself to sound expressionless despite his rage. "Did you really believe that ridiculous trick of yours would be capable of defeating me?"

Demyx gulped.

"Well, yeah, I was kinda hopin' it would..."

The silver-haired man said no more; he only raised one of his blades and then swooped down toward Demyx in preparation for a finishing blow. This attack was just too fast for the younger man to react to after using up so much of his power all at once, and a split-second before impact he reflexively closed his eyes and cringed in terror.

However, the attack never came. There was a sudden swishing sound and then a loud, grating crackle from just inches in front of his face; when he finally realized that he had never actually been struck by the impostor Xemnas' most recent attack, he slowly reopened his eyes to find a second pair of energy-blades interposed between him and the weapons of his attacker. Scooting backward away from the clashing blades, he saw something he had never expected.

There were now _two _Xemnases on the battlefield.

"And who might _you _be?", the attacking Xemnas said, somewhat condescendingly toward the newcomer.

"I believe you know the answer to your question already," he said, calm as usual. "But I am Xemnas, Number One and the Superior of Organization XIII."

He took a step back from the other Xemnas, removing his blades from their clash with his and then pointing one of them straight at him.

"And furthermore... there's only enough room in this world for one of me."


	19. A Fight to the Death

**CHAPTER 18**  
_~ A Fight to the Death ~_

"There is only enough room in this world for one of me."

With those simple words, the Organization's Superior pointed one of his ethereal blades toward his Fangirl-spawned impostor, challenging him to a one-on-one battle to decide which of the two Xemnases would be leaving the battlefield alive that day. The false Xemnas took a step back and pointed one of his own blades in the real one's direction, exactly mirroring his movements; he then charged forward and struck.

Just as before, the two opposing blades clashed together, generating a loud crackling noise as the forces within them struggled to overcome each other. Finding that their weapons were evenly matched, the two Xemnases broke out of the clash and leaped backward, landing several yards away and formulating a new plan of attack. One of the two stayed earthbound, while the other began to float into the air, finally stopping just above the treeline and summoning dozens of his red energy blades in the air around the other, pointing inward toward him from all directions. The grounded Xemnas shifted his blades into a defensive position and remained perfectly still, waiting for the incoming attack; it was _his _attack, after all, so he already knew what was going to happen.

One by one, the blades hovering in midair were propelled downward... and one by one, their target deflected them with his own blades, sending them flying off in all different directions and shredding apart the landscape all around him. Trees were punctured through with fist-sized holes, playground equipment was sliced up into its component parts, wood chips were set ablaze, and the ground itself was split apart by deep gouges. When it was all over, Xemnas stood in the center of all the destruction, completely unharmed.

"It's unwise to resort to such an attack so soon," the Xemnas on the ground said, shortly before flying up to meet his counterpart in the air. Their blades clashed once again, filling the sky with sparks and flashes of reddish energy; Demyx and Tundo just stood still far below them, staring up at the battle with their mouths gaping open.

"Dude," Demyx said, in awe of the unlikely battle playing out right before him. "Have... have any of you guys actually seen Xemnas _fight _before?"

Tundo couldn't manage to form any words, though he did manage to shake his head slowly. He could barely even follow the movements of the two Xemnases; his eyes raced about, trying to track the pair of black blurs as they zipped about trading blows and clashing their weapons together again and again. If they hadn't occasionally stopped with blades crossed, each attempting to overcome the other and disarm him with brute force, he probably would not have been able to follow the fight at all.

Toivo had finally managed to get up off of his back at this point, though his broken wrists made it impossible for him to do much more than watch. Like Tundo, he was having a hard time even figuring out what was going on up above the treetops; it seemed that out of the three fighters still conscious, only Demyx's vision was quick enough to fully percieve the kind of speed the twin Superiors possessed.

When one Xemnas blocked a powerful double-slash with a barrier, the other Xemnas countered by siphoning away the barrier's energy with some sort of power-draining electrical attack. When his opponent responded by projecting the barrier outward in the form of many blue beams, the other Xemnas stopped them with the same barrier attack that had been used against him just moments before; for several seconds, the sky was lit by explosions of blue-white energy as two conflicting barrages of lasers slammed into each other with such force that the trees belowed them swayed violently and both Xemnases-_-_barriers and all-_-_were shoved back several feet.

As the barriers faded, one of the two Xemnases managed to strike the other with a swift kick to the face; the second Xemnas countered with a quick slash that managed to slice the other across the chest, disintegrating away a thin section of his cloak and leaving an already-cauterized wound in the skin beneath as it went. They both attempted another kick simultaneously, which resulted in their legs clashing together just like their weapons previously had; a split-second later, each of them leaped backward and somehow skidded to a stop in midair, despite the distinct lack of anything solid for their feet to skid on.

"It's pointless," one of the two said, "It is clear that we are exactly the same... nothing will come of this battle if we allow it to continue."

The other Xemnas, looking a bit incredulous, shifted his feet slightly before responding.

"And what alternative do you suppose there is?"

The Xemnas who had spoken first suddenly broke into a wide and very creepy smile.

"Join me," he said, dematerializing one of his weapons and stretching out his hand. "Together, the two of us will be unstoppable. Even alone, none in this world can match your power... think of the possibilities. With both of our power combined, we could easily tear this world apart and create a new one from the ashes."

"True, there are many things about this world that disgust me," the other Xemnas said, dematerializing his weapons as well. "Pollution, hatred, pointless warfare, barbaric rituals and corruption of all kinds... this world is indeed far from the ideal."

Both Xemnases descended a bit closer to the ground, their weapons disappearing. They finally came to a stop on a nearby road that spiraled back and forth up the mountain, leading toward a parking area and other roads that sloped back down into the park. Standing just about ten feet apart, arms crossed, the two Xemnases continued their conversation.

"I would like nothing more than to change the world..."

He uncrossed his arms, rematerializing his weapons and holding them in front of his chest in a defensive stance. The other Xemnas responded in turn, and soon the pavement below them was bathed in the red glow of the two sets of energy-blades.

"However... casting aside all things and starting anew from nothing, as you propose, is not the way."

"What holds you back?", the other Xemnas said, taking a few slow steps forward. "What, of all the insignificant objects in this world, is so important to you that you cannot bear to discard it?"

* * *

Ansem slowly led Zagan, Irael, and D'aal on a tour of the underground complex that was the home of the Keybearers, accompanied by a pair of armored, Keyblade-wielding guards. As the three newcomers had learned, the ordinary soldiers that made up the bulk of Ansem's army were equipped with mass-produced Keyblades and identical suits of armor, while only the most powerful and skilled warriors among them-_-_those who had achieved the rank of "Keyblade Master"-_-_were provided with unique equipment crafted specifically for them. They had just passed through the room where this armor was forged, watching as Ansem operated a series of complex machines to craft new suits of armor for them right before their eyes.

Now, after passing through the bunker's locker room, they had each changed into their new outfits, and the metallic suits of the three clanked slightly as they walked. The only piece of the uniform they were not currently wearing was the helmet, which each of the three held in one hand as they walked.

"And this," Ansem said, "Is the armory... where our entire supply of standard-issue Keyblades is stored. Feel free to look through them and select one of the size and grip you would prefer."

The weapons hung on the wall in racks, fully-formed rather than being reduced to their handles like those that they had seen in action before. Zagan lifted a long but fairly light blade from its container and tried out several different grips before finding one he liked best; Irael simply hefted the heaviest weapon he could find and stuck with it, while D'aal went through several different Keyblades before settling on a short one with a large, protective hand-guard. Ansem nodded in approval as the newly-armed recruits followed him into the hallway, heading toward the next stop in their journey-_-_a rather large stage, in front of an audience of fully-armored Keybearers.

"Thank you, everyone," the old man said, hurriedly walking out to the front of the stage and attempting to project his increasingly-feeble voice so that all could hear his words. "For coming to this ceremony. Today, I wish to introduce you to the three newest additions to our family, who have escaped from the clutches of one of our most mysterious enemies to join our side in the fight against the Fangirl menace... come forward."

The three ex-members of the Organization stepped forward and stood by Ansem's side, their newfound Keyblades clipped onto their belts (now reduced to just their handles) and their helmets held under their arms. Looking out across the crowd, Zagan spotted a few familiar faces; Terra, Aqua, and Ven-_-_the three he had once encountered after a Fangirl extermination mission-_-_were sitting in the front row. He immediately took notice of the fact that these three, as well as another young man with reddish-orange hair and tanned skin, were the only members of the crowd wearing the specialized armor that marked them as Keyblade Masters.

"And their names," Ansem said, pointing toward each of them in turn as he spoke. "Zagan Xavier Baldts... Irael Sindrisson... and D'aal."

* * *

"What about this world do I value, you ask?"

Xemnas charged at the imposter, and again the two clashed blades before bouncing back away from each other. They were now pacing around in circles in the middle of the road, each constantly searching for any sign of weakness in the other's defenses.

"A pointless question," he continued. "The two of us may be similar in all other ways, but in the way we view the world around us... we are polar opposites."

He launched one of his energy-blades in the false Xemnas' face, forcing him to sway back suddenly in order to avoid it. He countered by lunging forward with a double-bladed slash, hoping to catch his identical opponent off guard when he only had a single weapon to block with; instead of blocking, however, Xemnas hopped several feet into the air and delivered a powerful kick to his copy's chest, sending him staggering backward and nearly forcing him to the ground.

"It has already become clear that further discussion will get us nowhere," he said, taking a few steps toward his stunned opponent and materializing a new blade to replace the one he had thrown. "I reject your offer of joining forces. From this point forward, this shall be a fight to the death."

Again, the two Xemnases clashed blades, rapidly slashing at each other in a flurry of red and black that the Organization members watching from the ruined playground below had difficulty following. At one point, one of the two dematerialized a single blade to catch the other by the throat, slamming him into the rocky hillside along the edge of the road; his opponent was stunned at first, but quickly escaped from the hold when he suddenly seemed to melt into the stone. There was a brief pause in the battle as he emerged several feet away, passing straight through a tree and several loose boulders as if completely immaterial.

"Ah," the other Xemnas said, seeming a bit impressed. "So you've even mastered _that _technique... our powers truly are equal."

Before he could say anything further, he was interrupted by a large black boot flying directly at his face; he dodged to the side and countered with a swipe from his weapon, but the other Xemnas managed to block the attack with one of his own as he flipped in mid-jump, clearing his opponent's full height and landing on the other side. He then thrust one of his blades forward, an attack which the other Xemnas couldn't quite dodge; the weapon just barely cut into his side as he attempted to shift himself out of its path, effortlessly slicing through his cloak and leaving a wide burned gash across his lower torso as it went.

The injured Xemnas snarled in pain, immediately whipping around and lashing out with several slashes of his own. His twin attempted to block, but couldn't quite manage to hold off the full force of the assault, ending up with several new slashes across his chest and upper arms. He stopped this attack by suddenly generating a flare of silvery power all around his body, with thorn-like black and white arcs of energy crackling throughout it and occasionally leaping off in the direction of his opponent. The other Xemnas, after being struck by several such bolts, wisely decided to put off his attack for the moment and took a few quick steps back to move himself out of range.

When the silvery aura faded, the two Xemnases once again returned to their battle, this time launching black-and-white energy thorns back and forth at each other. As more and more of the jagged arcs of energy streaked through the air between the two, the pavement beneath them began to crack and split; occasionally, the stray beams even sliced clumps of grassy earth free of their foundations and sent them toppling down the hillside toward the forested area below. Tundo was forced to throw himself to the ground to avoid several of the seemingly-unstoppable thorns of energy, which penetrated several trees in front of him and then flew off into the distance for several seconds before finally vanishing.

"Damn... those two must really be goin' all-out up there," the fat man said, wiping sweat off his forehead and pulling himself back to his feet. "I ain't ever seen anything like this..."

"Yeah, I know what you mean," Demyx replied. He had dematerialized his sitar, and was sitting with his back against one of the few trees in the area that hadn't yet been sliced apart or punched through. "I'm not sure if I'd cause this much random destruction if I _tried_..."

"I know I sure as hell couldn't," Toivo said, flinching slightly as he accidentally moved his wrist. "About the only thing I've seen that really compares to this is the giant hole that Kisaki chick left in the training room's wall a while back..."

He glanced back up at the battle on the hill and saw that one of the Xemnases had uprooted a tree and was holding it in midair with some sort of telekinetic force. One of the thorn-like beams of energy spiraled around its trunk all the way down to the roots, and then suddenly the sliced-apart chunks went rocketing through the air toward the other Xemnas, who struck several out of the air and dodged others. Eventually, however, he slipped a bit and was slammed in the chest by one of the blocks of wood, sending him crashing to the ground. Tundo cringed a bit; he could tell just by seeing it that that _had _to have hurt.

"I sure hope that ain't _our _Xemnas..."

"Nah, that was the fake," Demyx said, "See, he's the one with that wound in his side... our guy's got a bunch of slashes across his chest."

Tundo almost had to hold back a laugh, though the fact that his stomach still hurt so much made this task a bit easier than usual. It was really a bit of a ridiculous situation when he thought about it: a fight between two people who so closely resembled each other that the only way to tell them apart was by comparing their _injuries._

* * *

"Well, whatever it is that's going on out there," Vexen said, "It's certainly more than a simple glitch in our system."

The old scientist's eyes were glued to the Fangirl Detection System's monitors, particularly the one that showed what appeared to be two Xemnases zipping across the landscape. Naminé had started a complete scan of the area a few minutes earlier, but it was not yet complete; it had, however, revealed something unusual about the second Xemnas.

"One of them's coming up normal," Zexion said, noticing as the figures appeared on the screen, "But the other one... whoever it is, it's registering a Fangirlism level of _eighty-eight._"

"_What?_", Vexen shouted, suddenly turning in the smaller man's direction before glancing back at the screen. He had been focusing so much on the movements of the two Organization symbols that he hadn't yet noticed the results of the scan beginning to come in. "Eighty-eight? That... that can't be right..."

"That's crazy," Naminé gasped. "I... I wasn't sure if the scale even _went _that high..."

"That _is_ near the top of the scale," Vexen said, "The highest Fangirlism level the current scale can effectively measure would be ninety-nine... and this is _by far _the closest we've ever come to actually reaching that upper limit."

"A Fangirlism level of 88," Zexion mumbled, glancing at the results of the scan as more and more details came in. "That would be about a match for Xemnas, wouldn't it... which would certainly explain how this thing's managed to survive as long as it has, whatever it is."

Noticing a quiet _beep _from the Fangirl Detection System, Vexen suddenly turned away from Zexion and back toward the monitor. The data from the scan of the lone Fangirl left on the battlefield was beginning to appear.

"Ah," he said, "Crossover Fangirl. And not just any Crossover Fangirl... this one has a Fangirlism Level of 44. _That _explains a few things..."

"Strange that it would be able to summon a copy of Xemnas, though," Zexion said, holding his hand to his chin and looking as if thinking very hard about something. "Usually, they only create copies of fictional characters... I've never heard of a Crossover Fangirl that was able to do something like this."

* * *

Demyx, Tundo, and Toivo continued to watch as the two injured Xemnases continued their battle, having moved into the air above the lake. Whereas Demyx had previously tried to stay out of the way of bystanders in order to avoid causing a panic, neither of the two who now fought seemed to be too concerned with such things; apparently, Xemnas was counting on the fact that reports of two identical silver-haired men in cloaks fighting in midair over a lake in Virginia would never be taken seriously by most of the general public.

Two members of the general public found themselves suddenly involved in the battle in a way that none of them would have asked for when one of the Xemnases telekinetically lifted their canoe out of the water, sending them tumbling overboard into the cold, murky waters. Demyx rushed to the side of the lake as quickly as he could without alerting the false Xemnas to his presence, then manipulated the water around the two stranded people so that it formed a powerful current pulling them straight toward the closest section of shoreline. Once they had safely reached dry land, the young musician let out a sigh of relief and wiped some sweat from his forehead, feeling a bit accomplished that he was able to help out in some small way despite being utterly helpless to interfere with the battle that was raging overhead.

Meanwhile, the canoe went sailing through the air, nearly striking Xemnas before being sliced cleanly in two by a single slash. The two split sections of the boat continued to fly forward for a few more feet before rapidly plunging downward into the water below. The Xemnas who had thrown it in the first place charged forward at this moment, attempting to catch his opponent off guard, but this attempt failed when the other Xemnas dodged around his charge and kicked him square in the back, slamming him down toward the lake.

Just before impact, the false Xemnas caught his balance and stopped himself in midair, hovering just inches above the water's surface. As the other swooped in for another attack, he suddenly formed a barrier around his entire body and dropped under the water, causing both slashes to miss their target and displace a few gallons of lakewater instead. The Xemnas floating above the surface frowned, staring down into the water as if trying to spot his opponent through the mud and silt that he had kicked up.

A few seconds of total silence passed, and then suddenly the water underneath Xemnas' feet was illuminated by a red glow from somewhere far below the surface. He dodged out of the way just in time to avoid a swarm of energy-blades that came flying upward in a pillar-like formation, a few of which just barely managed to slice through the trailing edges of his cloak as he moved aside. Once the attacks stopped, Xemnas surrounded himself in a barrier of his own and plunged into the lake, in pursuit of his clone once again.

Demyx now couldn't see a thing; he could only assume that the battle was still raging somewhere beneath the water's surface, as he occasionally spotted a glimmer of red or blue or silvery light shining through the muck and reaching someplace close enough to be within his range of vision. Tundo, sitting on a tree stump nearby, had finally decided to dematerialize his hammer; it didn't look like he was going to need it for much else in this battle, and at this point he wasn't sure he would have enough strength to swing it around if he had to. Toivo sat nearby, next to Roberto's unconscious form, occasionally looking over to make sure the injured wrestler was still breathing.

"Damn it, this is ridiculous," Tundo said, "At this rate it's gonna be _tomorrow _before they're finished..."

Toivo glanced over toward him and nodded.

"Yeah... not much we can do about it, though."

"Wait," Demyx said, "What about that last Fangirl? If we take that thing out... wouldn't the fake Xemnas just disappear?"

Tundo's eyes went wide.

"Wait a second here, you mean we coulda just smashed that Fangirl to bits and been done with this _ten minutes ago?_"

"Well... I guess so," Demyx said, "That's how it worked with the others, right?"

"That's right," Toivo said, "As soon as that one Fangirl got smashed, all the Pokémon just disappeared along with it."

At that very moment, two Xemnases erupted from the lake, both surrounded in spherical barriers of silvery-blue energy. They smashed against each other several times in midair, but the barriers seemed to absorb the full impact each time; eventually, both of them lowered their shields and just stared at each other as they hovered in midair. After several seconds of this passed, the real Xemnas suddenly rocketed toward the other, slamming him in the gut with a powerful kick and then chasing after him through the air to follow it up with another attack.

"Now's our chance," Demyx whispered to Tundo, "While those two are kicking the crap out of each other, we've gotta track down that Fangirl!"

With that, the two of them charged back in the direction of the playground; Demyx ran up the side of a nearby hill, while Tundo took the stairs (which was a bit difficult now that every few steps there was a gaping hole where one of the two Xemnases had blasted some of the wood apart.) While the two silver-haired men continued to clash in midair over the lake, Demyx raced across the wreckage toward the last known location of the Fangirl and Tundo finally reached the top of the stairs, picking up speed a bit in a futile attempt to catch up with him.

It wasn't long before Demyx spotted the creature; it was hard not to, considering that it had rainbow-colored hair and was carrying an oversized sword wrapped in bandages. He summoned his sitar, then spun it into position as he pointed in the creature's direction.

"_There _you are!"

He raised the heavy instrument over his head and swung it down toward the Fangirl so quickly that the thing barely saw it coming; it only narrowly managed to dodge the attack, hopping to the side and growling as it readied its own weapon to deflect any further attacks. Instead of swinging his sitar, however, Demyx held up his free hand and blasted it with a jet of water that sent it toppling backward into a pile of dead leaves.

The Fangirl stood back up and waved its hands in the air several times, but nothing seemed to happen; apparently, all of its power was already used up after creating something as powerful as the Xemnas-lookalike was. Demyx ran in, charging up a sphere of concentrated water in his hand as he went, but just when he was about to launch it directly into the Fangirl's face, a barrier of energy suddenly appeared in his path. His orb of water exploded harmlessly against the barrier, getting Demyx's cloak a bit wet but otherwise accomplishing nothing.

"What the..."

Before he could finish his sentence with one of Xigbar's favorite words, he looked up and found that one of the Xemnases-_-_the fake one, judging by the injuries-_-_was hovering just a few feet above the Fangirl's head.

"This battle does not concern you," he said, glaring death at Demyx with his creepy orange eyes. "I would suggest that you do not attempt to interfere, or-_-_"

Before he could finish his sentence, the false Xemnas was sent flying by a sudden explosion of silvery energy. The other Xemnas had appeared just a few yards away, standing on a chunk of soil and asphalt that had been sliced away from the rest of the road and had slipped a few feet down the hillside below. The impostor crashed into a tree that was already full of holes, instantly shattering it into splinters before continuing his rapid descent toward the ground.

Before the fake Xemnas was able to get back up, he found himself caught in the grasp of a strange net of electricity-like bolts of energy. He struggled against it, but nothing he did seemed to help; slowly, he was lifted off the ground against his will and dragged away from Demyx and the Fangirl-_-_and toward the hands of the real Xemnas.

"This technique," the fake said, feeling his power begin to slowly drain away from every inch of his body. "No, it can't be... it shouldn't..."

Xemnas said nothing; he only raised his hands slightly, causing his copy to be lifted even higher above the ground so that the two were now facing each other on the same level. The false Xemnas snarled, still struggling against the attack's hold; he managed to get one hand away from the crackling web of energy, but still could not break free.

Though he couldn't help but be a bit creeped-out by the attack itself, Demyx was almost ready to jump up and down out of excitement-_-_the real Xemnas was definitely coming out on top of the fake now.

"He's got 'im!", Tundo said, pumping his fist in triumph. "No way that Xemnas wannabe is gonna survive much more o' this!"

As far as either of the two could tell, Tundo was right-_-_the false Xemnas wasn't making much progress in breaking free of this attack, despite the fact that he was able to wriggle one arm out of its grasp. No matter how hard he seemed to be trying to hide all traces of emotion, it was clear that he was in quite a bit of pain... and he was _very _angry about it.

"No," he muttered to himself, seemingly giving up all hope of breaking free despite his words. "No... this is not over yet..."

The real Xemnas raised an eyebrow; from where he was standing, it very much appeared that it _was _over. He focused more of his power on his draining attack, but the other Xemnas didn't seem to react; he just hung limply in midair, staring straight at him. Finally, the false Xemnas' eyes slipped shut.

"It isn't over yet, is it?"

Xemnas released his hold on the stream of electricity, causing it to suddenly fizzle out into nothingness and drop his opponent to the ground. He landed with a soft _thud _in a pile of dried leaves, and the real Xemnas floated down and took a few steps toward him, watching for any sign of the Fangirl-created copy disappearing like other creations of this variety of Fangirl always did.

Instead, the other Xemnas suddenly sprang back to his feet, his eyes glowing brighter than ever.

"I told you," he said, "This is not over."

He lunged forward, unarmed, but instead of slamming into Xemnas he simply passed through him... and then both of them vanished in an instant. Demyx just stood where he was and stared on at the empty air in front of him in shock, not sure what to think; Tundo stuttered a bit but wasn't able to come up with any words.

"Wha... what just happened?"

* * *

The next thing Xemnas knew, he suddenly found himself in the middle of an unfamiliar dark city, with tall buildings rising up all around him. That was what it looked like at first, anyway-_-_within seconds of his arrival, the buildings in the distance began to waver about as if only partly real, flickering between solid and semi-transparent in appearance. He was soon joined in this strange place by the other Xemnas, who descended from atop a nearby skyscraper that was lit up with neon lights of all different colors.

"I suppose you would like an explanation of this," the false Xemnas said, waving his hands about for emphasis as he spoke. "You're confused... perhaps a bit disoriented. Isn't that right?"

Xemnas just smiled.

"No."

The other Xemnas didn't seem to believe him, and took a few steps closer to him as he continued to speak.

"No?", he said, "Are you sure? This is not merely some city I have transported you into... this is-_-_"

"The inner world of your being," Xemnas said, finishing his counterpart's sentence for him. "And I know very well what you are attempting to do. Your body was growing weak in the grasp of my attack, so you attempted to take control of mine instead."

The real Xemnas generated ethereal blades in each hand, causing the air to hum with energy for a few moments, and then continued to speak.

"You were already well aware of the fact that I possess all of the same powers as you," he said, beginning to walk toward the copy, "So you should have known better than to think that you would be able to take control of me without a fight. This is nothing more than a final act of desperation..."

In an instant, the real Xemnas had pinned the fake against the wall of the skyscraper behind him; the fake attempted to summon his weapons, but they faded and disappeared almost as soon as they came.

"Your fate was already sealed long before this moment, Fangirl-spawn."

With those words, Xemnas encased himself in a spherical barrier and smashed through the wall of the skyscraper, shoving the fake Xemnas through it in the process. He followed up on this attack by flying forward and slamming him again before he even hit the ground after the first collision, sending him flying through the inner walls of the building and skidding to a stop in the dark, rainy street on the other side. Just as he managed to pull himself to his feet, his shielded opponent appeared from the hole in the building and let loose with a series of bluish beams of energy, pouring all the power from his barrier into one last attack.

Back at the ruins of the playground, the two Xemnases suddenly popped back into existence, the true Superior standing completely unharmed (at least, aside from the injuries he already had before) while the other clutched his chest and seemed to have difficulty even standing up straight. Demyx turned away for a moment as the real Xemnas summoned one of his energy-blades and finished off his impersonator with a single powerful slash, causing the fake Xemnas' form to vanish in a flash of green light before the wound even became visible.

"Now," he said, turning his head in the direction of the Fangirl, "There is only one thing left to do here."

Demyx was about to blast the Fangirl with another jet of water when Xemnas charged forward, summoning his second blade in mid-run and slicing the creature into several pieces within a matter of seconds. He then dematerialized both weapons and began to walk back toward the parking lot where the Dimensional Hippievan, glancing back over his shoulder for a moment to make sure the others were not far behind.

"Demyx and Tundo," he said, "If Roberto has not regained consciousness by now, the two of you will carry him to the van."

They both gulped and nodded, not daring to disobey a direct order so soon after seeing just what the leader of their Organization was capable of. They hefted the unconscious wrestler up onto their shoulders, walking side-by-side down the path around the lake to make sure they could keep a good grip on him. Toivo followed not far behind, trying not to move his arms in order to avoid aggravating his injuries any further.

Finally, they reached the place where the Hippievan was parked, and the group of battered warriors climbed in; Xemnas immediately took the driver's seat, while Roberto was laid across the back seats and strapped in with several seatbelts. Tundo and Toivo squeezed into the middle seats, and finally Demyx hopped into the front passenger seat. Seconds later, the van rolled forward and vanished in a flash of energy, leaving the state park and its now-destroyed playground area behind.

"So, uh," Demyx said, glancing slightly toward Xemnas as he drove the Hippievan through the void. "Are we gonna have to pay the guys who run this place back for all the damage to their park?"

* * *

Back at the underground headquarters of the Keybearers, Zagan, Irael, and D'aal had finished their introduction to the rest of the group and were now sitting in front of Ansem's desk once again. They had learned that their armor, like most of the Keyblade, could be miniaturized and stored away when it was no longer necessary to wear it; as such, all three had put away their armor and were back to their pants and underclothes once again.

"So," Ansem said, sitting down in the large chair behind his desk and addressing his three newest recruits, "Tell me more about this 'Organization XIII' you once belonged to. All I truly know about them is that they wear those black cloaks as a sort of uniform, that they have somehow gained a mysterious power... and that the one who started the group was a man I once worked alongside."

"You worked with Xemnas, huh?", Zagan said, raising an eyebrow. "Or was this back before he started using that codename?"

"Indeed... I worked with the one you know as 'Xemnas' more than twelve years ago, in a time when neither the Keybearers nor his Organization yet existed. He went by a different name then... Xehanort. Xehanort Eiyihm Nazo Sakhmet was his full name, if I recall correctly."

The old man reached into his drawer and pulled out a stack of old papers, some of which were beginning to yellow slightly with age. He sorted them out and placed them on his desk in front of his newfound allies, who leaned over to get a better look. One newspaper article showed Ansem along with a younger-looking Vexen in a labcoat, posing for a picture along with a group of other teachers and staff; it appeared to have been taken in front of a high school. Another picture, accompanying a newspaper article titled "Unidentified, Injured Man Appears Outside School," appeared to be of a younger Xemnas with a different hairstyle being loaded onto a stretcher while Ansem and Vexen watched. Finally, there were a series of more recent pictures, depicting Xehanort, Ansem, and Vexen in matching labcoats working with machinery that resembled some of the older equipment found in the storage rooms of Vexen's lab.

"But enough talk of my past," he said, rubbing his forehead slightly. "I must know more about this Organization that Xehanort has established. I have heard that some members seem to have control over the elements... how did they manage to acquire such unusual powers?"

"Well, I don't know for sure," D'aal spoke up, "But we were all taught, in our earliest years with the Organization, that survivors of Fangirl attacks sometimes gain these powers."

"That's right," Irael said, "Only those who have encountered Fangirls before are accepted into Organization XIII."

"So these powers somehow develop as a side-effect of Fangirl exposure... how strange," Ansem said, looking slightly worried. He reached into his drawer and plucked out an old pen and a pad of paper, rapidly writing something down for a few seconds before setting them back down. "This... this is rather troubling news indeed, if my suspicions are correct."

He glanced down at the pad of paper again, looking over what he had just written and jotting down a few last-minute additions as they came to his mind. He then looked over a few of his older notes for a minute or two before turning his attention back toward Zagan, Irael, and D'aal to ask yet another question.

"And what of the Organization's weapons?", he asked, pointing to a few more-recent photographs in his collection which appeared to be still frames captured from low-quality video camera footage. "I've seen them occasionally, when the Organization's activities are briefly captured by security cameras or news teams... how do they work?"

"They're not something you can just build, like a Keyblade," Zagan answered, raising one hand and summoning his own weapon in a flash of dull yellowish-orange energy. "As far as I know, they come from the same place as the rest of our powers."

"Yes," D'aal added, "The weapons of the Organization are materialized at will, and when no longer needed they disappear once again. Like this..."

He stood up for a second and held one hand out to his side, concentrating his energy into that hand. For a split-second, purplish energy spread outward into the shape of his rapier, and then with a sudden flash of lighter-colored energy it had become just as solid as anything else in the room. A moment later, he lowered his hand and dematerialized the weapon with another flash before sitting back down.

"I would suggest you do the same," Ansem said, glancing over at Zagan. "Though I still know so little of these powers you possess, there is still... something about them that unnerves me. I would appreciate if you would not summon them within this building unless it is absolutely necessary."

Zagan shrugged, then let his weapon melt away into orange energy before disappearing entirely. Ansem suddenly seemed relieved, though it was likely that at least part of that was due to the fact that nobody in the room had their weapons out anymore-_-_he had only known the three for less than a day, after all, and he still did not trust them fully just yet. Despite his relief at the disappearance of the two weapons, he still found that he was growing quite tired; he suspected that it was because he had chosen to personally guide these three in their tour of the complex, something that he seemed to be doing for less and less of the new recruits lately. Whatever the cause, Ansem felt that it was time for some much-needed rest, and he stood up from his chair abruptly and walked over toward the nearest door.

"Excuse me," the old man mumbled to himself, shaking his head as if trying to shake the thoughts and suspicions about the origins of the Organization's powers right out of his ears. "All this has gotten me rather exhausted... I really must go lie down."

"No problem," Zagan said, smirking slightly. "At your age, it's a miracle you're still up and working as hard as you are."

"How about we take a look around while you're gone?", D'aal asked. "Maybe introduce ourselves to a few of the Keybearers?"

"Hmm... I suppose that would be all right," Ansem said, standing up slowly. "I believe it's almost time for dinner... if you'd like, I could ask a few of my younger pupils to show you three around town and find something to eat."

The three former Organization members stood up from their seats and nodded in agreement; none of them had been able to get much of anything decent to eat during the time after they had left the mountain base they once called home, and all three were more than a little bit hungry at this point.

"Sounds good to me," Zagan said, watching as the older man left the room and then turning toward his two companions. "I could use a good meal after all this running and hiding we've been doing lately."


	20. The Fungus Spreads

**CHAPTER 19**  
_~ The Fungus Spreads ~_

Zagan, Irael, and D'aal slowly walked the streets of the city's business district alongside a trio of Keybearers, who Zagan immediately recognized as the same three he had met earlier at the scene of a Fangirl extermination assignment. None of them seemed to recognize him; he most likely had his now-abandoned black cloak to thank for that, as its powers of concealment had rendered his face nearly invisible when he had bumped into them before.

One of the three, the young man named Terra, stood a couple inches taller than anyone else of the group. His hair was spiked up in a way that vaguely reminded Zagan of Xemnas' bizarre hairstyle, a coincidence that he found to be absolutely hilarious. Aqua, about the same age as Terra but not nearly as large, was the only female of the group; she wore somewhat fancier clothes than the other two and almost seemed to glide across the ground rather than walking if you weren't watching too carefully, though Zagan could tell that she was no less of a warrior than her larger companion despite her sometimes dainty appearance. The youngest of the three, Ven, was most notable for the fact that he looked almost exactly like Roxas; this fact had struck him quite a bit the first time they had met, and even now he wasn't sure what to think of their resemblance.

"So," Zagan said, "You guys mentioned that you usually hang out with one other guy... what's he up to that was so important he couldn't come along with us today?"

"Other guy?", Ven asked, "Oh, you mean Ignis? He's probably busy training with Riku."

_Riku._ That was a name Zagan recognized-_-_he had heard Otonashi mention that he had a son named Riku, though he had all but given up on any possibility that he had survived the Fangirl swarm that had devastated their island hometown. Furthermore, he recalled Fangirls mentioning the name a few times as well. He wondered if this matchup of names was just another coincidence; he'd have to wait until he met this Riku himself to know for sure.

"How many of you Keybearers are there, anyway?", Irael asked. "Our Organization had about fifty members total, before we left."

"More than that," Aqua said, "Though I don't know how much more these days... Master Ansem has been bringing in new recruits almost every week since he figured out how to mass-produce Keyblades earlier this year."

"Yeah," Terra added, "Those new Keyblades aren't quite as impressive as the originals, but they're more than enough to handle Fangirls, especially fighting in groups. And we need all the help we can get, with the swarms the way they've been lately..."

"All this talk about Keyblades and Fangirls," D'aal sighed, "Let's not forget why we came this way in the first place. Where could we go for a good meal around here?"

"Oh, there's this really good Italian place not too far from here," Ven said, apparently a bit excited by the prospect of food. "C'mon, I haven't been there in _ages!_"

"Italian, huh?", Zagan said, glancing around to his two companions. "That sound good to you guys?"

Irael shrugged; he didn't seem to care much, so long as they found something to eat soon. D'aal nodded slightly. And with that, it was decided-_-_they would go to this Italian restaurant which Ven had suggested.

* * *

Xemnas sat calmly in a chair in the sickbay, his damaged black cloak tossed aside and hanging on the edge of one of the nearby beds. Unusually, three of the beds were filled-_-_Tundo, the only one still awake, sat upright and munched away on some chips; Toivo and Roberto were both lying in their beds unconscious and thoroughly bandaged-up, with the bald man's broken wrists already encased in casts.

Marluxia was by the Superior's side examining his wounds, which thankfully did not need a lot of attention due to the fact that the false Xemnas' ethereal blades had already cauterized them shut and disintegrated any bacteria that could have hung around to cause infections. The Superior just sat perfectly still throughout the entire process, not flinching even when gloved hands prodded at his injuries and applied various medicines.

"You know," Marluxia said, "I think this is the first time you've ever been in here since I took over medical duty from Vexen."

"Yes," Xemnas replied, nodding slightly. "Unlike many of our younger members, I have not made a habit of carelessly acquiring injuries."

At that moment, Xigbar slipped down from the ceiling, landing on one of the empty hospital beds near the two larger men.

"First time you actually went out on an extermination mission in a while, too," he said, almost as if joking around with the Superior. "Must've been one hell of a Fangirl to get the big boss himself all scarred up like that."

Xemnas turned toward him, frowning slightly.

"It was a rather powerful Crossover Fangirl variant," he said, "But the Fangirl itself was not the problem. Somehow, it was capable of using its powers to create some sort of... alternate version of myself."

"It's strange," Marluxia said, "They're only supposed to be able to summon copies of fictional characters... I could hardly believe it when Tundo and Toivo first mentioned what happened."

"Well hey, ya never know," Xigbar said, "Maybe some dumbass went and made a video game about us, or somethin'."

Marluxia shrugged.

"Anything's possible, I guess," he said, "I'm not sure if that's all that likely, though... most of us have been caught on security cameras and such a few times over the years, but it'd take more than a few brief glimpses for some game designer to know much more about us than our appearance."

"Plus, Xemnas here is pretty camera-shy," Xigbar added with a snicker that earned him a glare from the Superior.

Marluxia packed up his medical supplies, now finished cleaning up Xemnas' wounds. He stood up from the chair, glancing over to Xigbar for a moment before turning back toward the pink-haired man.

"These wounds were not particularly serious, I presume?"

"For anyone else they might have been a problem," Marluxia answered, "But since there's no bleeding, you should be fine... aside from having a few new scars. Just try not to exert yourself too much over the next few days."

With that, Xemnas left the room, slowing down to glance at his torn-up cloak for a moment as he passed it but then apparently deciding that it would be better to change into a new, undamaged one instead. Xigbar soon followed after him, distorting gravity around himself once again and leaving the room on the ceiling. Marluxia rolled his eyes slightly at this, then went back to what he had been doing before Xemnas came by-_-_organizing his medical supplies, making a list of things he needed to stock up on soon, and monitoring Toivo and Roberto's condition.

* * *

"I dunno," Ven said between bites of pizza, "I mean, they're wiping out Fangirls too, right?"

"Right," Aqua said, twirling a bit of spaghetti on her fork. "But Master Ansem seems to be convinced that they're enemies..."

"Let's hope he has it wrong this time," Terra said, setting down a half-eaten piece of garlic bread. "For all our sakes. I'm not sure we can handle them, if it comes to that."

A few seconds passed before Zagan, Irael, and D'aal joined the three at the large, round table they had picked out. Their food had already arrived, and almost as soon as they sat down they dug in. Aqua was a bit stunned by just how quickly they were eating; they really must not have had much food lately, with the way it was disappearing from their plates. After a few minutes of furious eating, D'aal slowed down a bit, though the other two showed no sign of stopping until every last bit of food was gone.

"Not bad," the blue-haired elf said, popping a piece of tortellini into his mouth and gulping it down before continuing. "Though I have to say, I'm probably going to miss seeing Axel sending still-sizzling food flying around to people's tables on his chakrams."

Noticing the odd looks the three Keybearers were giving him, he took a quick drink and then explained.

"Axel was our head chef back at the Organization," he said, "He had power over fire and disc-like weapons, so he often used them instead of conventional cooking equipment."

"Hmph," Irael said, "Good riddance, I say."

"Eh, there's ups and downs to Axel's cooking techniques," Zagan added, shrugging slightly. "Definitely saved us a good bit of money on skillets and fuel and stuff like that, though."

The rest of the meal passed with similar small talk between the two groups, with several members of the Organization being mentioned as well as several other Keybearers who were not present. Zagan made a conscious effort to mostly bring up Organization members that the other two had always disliked; on top of that, Xemnas' consistent lack of direct involvement in Fangirl extermination was brought up, as well as his habit of "punishing" members who make too much noise during meetings by assigning them the duty of training new members. Though it was difficult to make his description of the Organization _entirely _negative without coming out with any blatant falsehoods that Irael and D'aal would possibly call him out on, twisting the truth a bit and pushing the conversation in directions that accented the bad while overlooking the good was no problem for him.

When they were finished eating, each of the six paid for their own food and then they headed back out into the streets. After walking for a few minutes, Zagan spotted a few stores nearby and was immediately reminded that his phone-_-_the only means he had of transferring into the Internet-_-_had been lost for good during his escape from the Organization's base several days earlier.

"Whew," he groaned, clutching his stomach in a slightly exaggerated manner. "I must've eaten a ton... time for a bathroom break already. You guys mind waiting on me for a little bit?"

"Not at all," Terra said, taking another step and then stopping just short of the sidewalk's edge. Aqua and Ven stopped as well, and Irael and D'aal soon joined them.

"I'm guessing one of those stores over there has a bathroom," Ven said, pointing in the direction of the exact same store that Zagan had noticed just seconds before.

"Right," Zagan said, nodding and turning and crossing the street in the direction of the shop, "Be back in a few minutes."

* * *

Shortly after entering the little electronics store, Zagan immediately headed over to the counter where the owner was standing, sorting out some new products to be placed on the shelves. Before the unsuspecting shopkeeper could even say hello, he waved his hand in front of his face and produced a cloud of spores that immediately sent him into unconsciousness, then proceeded to take a look around at the selection of phones hanging on one of the nearby walls.

"Let's see," he said, glancing over several in a row, "Hmm... none of these are quite as nice as my old one, but... this should work."

He snatched one of the phones off of the shelf and headed into the tiny one-person bathroom in the back, locking the door behind him as he went to work tearing open the packaging of the device. Within a minute, he had gotten the phone up and running; several minutes later, he had managed to activate its web browser and modify it so that it was capable of opening portals directly into the depths of the Internet where the Fangirls lurked. If there had been anyone else inside the store at this moment, they would have seen a strange green light flashing through the cracks around the bathroom's door.

Inside the bathroom, Zagan held up the phone and it projected a swirling green portal with zeroes and ones flickering around its outer edges, just like the one he, Irael, and D'aal had fled through when they had left the Organization's base in a hurry before Saix could chase them down.

"Yep... this should work just fine."

With that, he stepped through the portal and vanished, leaving the phone sitting on the edge of the sink in the locked bathroom as he went. Before long, he had reached the massive white sphere that marked the entrance of the Fangirl Queen's domain, stepping up to the outer edge as always and opening a doorway in the side with a simple motion of his hand. The Fangirl Queen was not present, but the room was far from empty-_-_Roxas still hung from his shackles on the wall at the far end, and dozens of the pulsating, gooey pods that incubated the newborn Fanboys hung from the other walls and ceiling, just waiting to be released into the world.

Taking a few echoing steps into the open chamber, Zagan glanced up above him and spotted something that he hadn't noticed before-_-_a single Fanboy cocoon attached at the exact center of the ceiling above, surrounded by several tentacle-like growths that seemed to be constantly pumping some sort of glowing energy into the center of the pod. Unlike the other pods, a symbol of some sort was emblazoned upon the outside of this one, though it was so high up that Zagan wasn't able to get a clear look at exactly what it was.

"Ooh, Zagan's here," a Fangirlish voice said, startling him slightly. The voice came from an unusually-humanoid Fangirl that stood nearly as tall as Zagan himself, carrying what appeared to be a neon-pink stuffed pony under one of its arms as it entered the room from another doorway. "Looking for the Queen, huh?"

"Yes, as a matter of fact I was," he answered, "Where is she? And who are _you?_"

"Oh, you know how the Queen is," the Fangirl said, apparently ignoring his other question. "Always busy these days, what with her part-time job on the outside and that new project she's been working on lately... I'm in charge while she's out."

Zagan raised one eyebrow. As far as he knew, the Fangirl Queen was not yet capable of taking on a solid form outside of the Internet, so he wasn't sure what this strange Fangirl meant by her "job on the outside." The "new project," however, seemed far more interesting; he decided to put off his questions on the Fangirl Queen's ability to leave the Internet for now and instead focus on finding out exactly what this project was.

"New project, huh? What's she up to now?"

"Look up there," the Fangirl said, pointing upward. "See that pod up at the very highest point of the ceiling? Just wait 'till you see what comes out."

"I'm guessing a Fanboy," he said, crossing his arms. "What's so special about this one?"

"You'll see," the Fangirl said, grinning evilly. It was at this moment that Zagan noticed that this creature had a more humanlike face, like that of the Fangirl Queen herself, rather than the text-symbol faces of ordinary Fangirls. "Hee hee... it's supposed to be a surprise! It's no fun if I just give it away right now."

Zagan shrugged and adjusted his glasses, taking another look at the dangling pod above. He still couldn't quite figure out what sort of symbol it was that had been placed on the outside of the cocoon, but he could tell that it was neither the silvery-white mark of the Organization or the vaguely similar golden crest used by the Keybearers. After a few more seconds of staring up at the mysterious object, he turned away and paced over toward Roxas instead.

"Hmm... he's gone to bed early today," he said, standing a few feet in front of the boy. "Looks like being used to create all those Fanboys took a lot out of him, huh?"

The Fangirl giggled for a few seconds, then burst out laughing. Apparently, the creature found something about what Zagan said to be absolutely hilarious; it continued to laugh for nearly a full minute, at one point literally rolling on the floor while doing so. Eventually, however, it managed to return to normal (or, at least, as close as Fangirls ever were to "normal") and stood back up again.

"So," it said, shrugging off the last few waves of giggles, "What about _your _new project? That's what you came to talk to the Queen about, right?"

"That's right," he answered, reaching down and unclipping his new Keyblade's handle from his belt. With a single press of a button, the rest of the weapon appeared piece-by-piece in the air around him and assembled itself into its complete form around the dull silvery-gray handle. "I've managed to infiltrate the Keybearers, along with two other former members of Organization XIII."

"Ooooh, that's good news."

Zagan nodded.

"Yep," he said, deactivating his Keyblade and returning the bare handle to his side once again. "Before long, the Keybearers and the Organization will be at each other's throats... everything's going exactly as planned."

* * *

"Lots of Fangirl activity on the lines today," an armored Keybearer said, speaking into the handle of his Keyblade. "But something's up. It's not quite the usual stuff..."

Another voice responded through the weapon's handle, coming through in between waves of static.

"What's so different about it?"

"I'm not sure," the soldier said, "They're not going on about the same crap as always... some things are about the same, but there's changes here and there. Seems to be a lot less of an obsession with homosexual males than usual, for one thing."

He glanced down at the laptop in front of him, which had several chatrooms, websites, and message boards open simultaneously in order to keep track of Fangirl-related activity in the area. Activity had suddenly increased to more than twice the levels he had seen before, and the changes he had noticed before had become even more pronounced. Discussions of who would win in a fight suddenly surged in popularity on the message boards, chatrooms broke out into arguments over video games, and some of the most common typical Fangirl behaviors seemed to be totally absent despite the obvious signs of a spike in Fangirl activity like those which always preceded a swarm.

"This is freakin' me out, man," the soldier said, setting his laptop on the ground and beginning to stand up. "It looks like a swarm's coming, but it's... it's..."

Before he could finish his sentence, the screen in front of him was suddenly filled with a swirling pattern of reds and blues, which started out slow and then sped up to the point where it could have easily caused seizures in thousands of Japanese children. The lone Keybearer backed away slowly, drawing and assembling his Keyblade, as the pattern of alternating colors formed into a portal and Fangirl-like creatures began to leap outward. Just like the Internet activity he had noticed seconds earlier, the creatures themselves were different than usual-_-_mainly due to the fact that they appeared to be male, and their text-symbol faces were oriented vertically rather than horizontally.

"What the hell are these things?"

He pressed the radio button on his Keyblade's handle and began to call in for backup, but before he was able to get a word out, he was hit in the chest by a blast of flame launched from one of the creatures' hands. Moments later, another fireball hit him, sending him crashing to the ground on his back and causing him to drop his weapon. When he rolled over and stretched to reach it, the Fanboys piled onto him all at once, pinning him to the ground and slowly crushing him under their weight. Just before losing consciousness, he heard the voice of his comrade coming through the scratchy radio speaker of his Keyblade.

"Anderson, what's going on out there? Come in, Anderson!"

* * *

Back in the Keybearers' underground headquarters, several of the identically-armored soldiers stood around a radio system, one of them sitting in a chair and listening closely for any response from the other side. On the other side of the room, a silver-haired teenager clad in the same armor as the others entered through the only doorway, carrying his helmet in one hand.

"Have you guys heard anything back from Anderson yet?", the newcomer asked, "I was supposed to take over for him on Fangirl-watch duty, but he hasn't come back to base with the equipment yet."

"Not a peep out of him over the radio in the last ten minutes," the seated soldier said, "I think we've lost 'im."

Another one of the soldiers sighed and wiped some sweat off his forehead, then turned toward the boy and explained what little they knew of the situation.

"Sounded like things are really going crazy out there," he said, "He was checking Fangirl activity when he noticed some differences from the usual patterns... and then he panicked."

"He turned his radio transmitter on for a second there," the Keybearer monitoring the radio system said, "But that was it. He never said anything."

For a few minutes, the room was entirely silent as everyone waited for a radio transmission from the missing soldier. Eventually, however, they realized that it would never come; he was most likely caught off guard and attacked by a developing Fangirl swarm, and if someone didn't get out there soon, the soldier known as Anderson would never come back alive.

"I'm going out there after him," the silver-haired boy said, putting on his helmet and raising the handle of his Keyblade in front of his face. "Ignis, do you read me?"

"Yeah," a static-muffled response came through the radio, "What's going on, Riku?"

"We've got a missing guy to track down and a Fangirl swarm to deal with. You ready?"

* * *

Vexen sighed and sat down in one of the several chairs in the Organization's main recreation room, worn out from the day he had spent tinkering with Zagan's discarded phone and trying to figure out exactly how it had been modified to enable it to generate portals into the Internet. He had managed to repair the damage that had been done to the phone, but so far he hadn't been able to get further than that; Zagan had apparently covered his tracks well, and there were nearly as many layers of security on the seemingly-ordinary phone as there were on the Fangirl Detection System.

Also present in the room were Zexion and Luxord, who glanced up for a moment as the older man entered but then went back to what they had been doing before-_-_the gambler was playing a game of solitaire, while his blue-haired companion was reading a newspaper. Kisaki was also hanging around, leaning over the back of Zexion's chair in an attempt to read over his shoulder; his occasional sighs of annoyance as he noticed her shadow always looming over him made it obvious that he didn't exactly appreciate her company.

"So," Luxord said, "How's the scientific business with that bloody cellphone going?"

"Not as well as I'd hoped," Vexen groaned, producing an avocado from his lunchbox and taking a bite out of it. "Zagan has massively enhanced the phone's security features... I've cracked one of his passwords and am on the way to deciphering a second one, but there's far more than just a few passwords to worry about."

"No surprise there," Zexion said, not looking up from his reading. "Zagan had us all fooled... who knows how far ahead of time he'd been planning this."

"And what more he has planned that we haven't even unearthed yet," Luxord added. "Quite the chessmaster, I'd say. Hard to believe he was trained by a reckless chap like Axel..."

"Speaking of training," Vexen said, seeming to be in a hurry to change the subject, "Both of you have been working with new members, yes? How far have they come?"

Kisaki looked up after a few seconds, finally tearing her attention away from Zexion long enough to realize that Vexen had been talking about her.

"I haven't had any training lately," she said, looking slightly bored. "Zexy's been too busy trying to figure out where Roxas went off to."

Zexion flinched slightly, annoyed at the nickname his trainee had taken to calling him despite repeated assurances that he would prefer to be called by his full name.

"Lexaeus and Xigbar have been busy, too... Fangirl Detection System work and half-day guard duty shifts all week," Zexion added. "When we have so many major problems going on all at once, little things like training sessions are bound to slip a bit."

Vexen nodded; though none of the members he had been assigned to train still needed much of his assistance, he could certainly recall times when other Organization business had taken precedence over routine training. He then glanced over toward Luxord, interested to see if he had anything to say about the Organization's newest inductee.

"How about the boy?", he asked, "Yoshi, was it?"

"Yes, that's the name," Luxord said, frowning slightly. "Haven't had much luck training him yet, unfortunately... seems to think everything's some kind of game."

Zexion snickered at the irony of just who was saying this, and after a moment Vexen joined in with a few quick laughs of his own. Once they were finished, Luxord continued.

"Why, when I got around to showing him my weapons, he asked me if I could transform them into bloody _Yu-Gi-Oh_ cards!"

The two black-cloaked men, who had previously been snickering quietly to themselves, now exploded into full-blown laughter. They had no trouble imagining the scene Luxord had described... or what the results would have looked like had the bearded Brit actually gone through with it, for that matter. Before long, Luxord himself had even joined in, slapping his knee so hard that Kisaki jumped a bit from the sound. By the time they had calmed back down, each of their days had been brightened just a bit; there was nothing like a fit of uncontrollable laughter to solve problems. Unfortunately, the peace and quiet of the recreation room didn't last long; hardly a minute had passed before it was broken by the loud, blaring sound of a Fangirl alarm.

Zexion sighed, folding up his newspaper and setting it down on the table in front of him. Luxord began to shuffle his cards back into a well-organized deck, then remembered that he could just dematerialize them and they all disappeared in a flash. Kisaki just looked around, seeming a bit confused and apparently not sure what she was supposed to do; she had not yet been sent out on a Fangirl extermination mission and usually wasn't around when others had headed out to deal with a swarm. Before any of the others in the room could stand, Vexen dropped his half-eaten avocado back into his lunch box and pulled himself back to his feet, heading toward the room's exit.

"I'll handle this one," he said, turning back toward Zexion and Luxord as he left, "I need something to relieve some stress, after all... and there's nothing better for that than pummeling Fangirls."

* * *

At that very moment, Riku and Ignis were in the process of doing just that. There was just one problem: the things they were fighting weren't exactly Fangirls. The two Keybearers were a bit stunned at the sight of them at first-_-_they had shorter hair than most Fangirls, with more-masculine bodies and clothes, and instead of being sideways their text-symbol faces were arranged vertically. Neither of them had ever seen such creatures before, but it soon became clear that they were just as much of a problem as the Fangirls they were used to.

"Look out!"

Riku narrowly avoided a fireball, dodging to the side just as he had heard Ignis' voice. The silver-haired boy silently thanked whatever deities may have existed for the fact that he had decided to start working harder on his training lately; just a week earlier, that attack probably would have at least grazed him, if it hadn't been a direct hit.

It seemed that several of these strange new creatures had powers similar to Flamer Fangirls, one of the first varieties that Ansem had named during his research. Like Flamers, these new enemies were a bit quicker and tougher than ordinary Fangirls and attacked by throwing balls of fire; unfortunately for them, they weren't quite quick enough, and Riku soon caught up to the group of Fanboys and knocked all three of them to the ground with a swing of his Keyblade. A series of rapid slashes later, all four glowed with green light and shattered-_-_one more thing they shared with the more-familiar Fangirls.

"How many of these things do we have left?", Riku asked, glancing over toward Ignis as he too finished off several of the Fanboys.

"A frickin' ton," he answered, blocking a punch from one of the creatures with the shaft of his Keyblade. "Just like every swarm. Time to cut the talk and get back to work!"

With that, the armored warrior leaped up onto the roof of a small house and shattered three Fanboys standing there with a single swing, illuminating the windows below with green light for a second afterward. Fortunately, nobody was home at the moment; if they had been, they would almost certainly have freaked out and called the police. Ignis ran across the roof and thrust his Keyblade point-first into a larger, more muscular Fanboy, sending it falling off the edge and smashing into a parked car below. Before he could jump down and finish it off, Riku did it for him, rushing over toward the vehicle and nearly slicing the Fanboy in half with a powerful slash that left a deep scrape in the body of the car underneath.

"Whoops..."

"Yeah... careful with the property damage, kid," the older of the two Keybearers said, hopping down from the roof. "Master Ansem has to pay for that kind of stuff... otherwise the government wouldn't be so cooperative."

Riku nodded, then returned his attention to the swarm around him. As a group of the bulky, muscular type of Fanboys approached, he returned to his ready stance and waited for them to get closer. Just when they were almost upon him and he could hear their angry muttering of all sorts of curses and derogatory comments, he charged forward, slicing one across the side; before they could react, he spun around and charged again from another angle, repeating the process several times until the creatures were slashed-up and disorientedly bumping into each other. Finally, he jumped into the air and slammed his Keyblade down into the middle of the group, destroying most of them and sending the rest flying and rolling across the ground.

"Hey, not bad!", Ignis called out, slapping another Fanboy aside with the flat edge of his Keyblade before continuing. "That's the move you were practicing last time in training, right?"

"Yeah," Riku said, nodding slightly and returning to his stance in preparation for another wave of Fanboys. "Finally managed to pull it off. How about you, any fancy tricks I haven't seen yet?"

Ignis stopped for a moment and thought, looking as if he was scratching his head (if you ignored the obvious fact that his head was covered by a helmet, of course.) He then turned toward Riku for a moment and nodded back, raising his Keyblade into the air above him.

"Oh, you wanna see something special, huh? Check this out."

He pressed a button on his Keyblade near the one that operated the radio system; it was a button that Riku couldn't find on his own Keyblade, presumably a feature that only the Keyblade Masters' weapons were designed with. He then lowered the handle near his face and said a few simple words.

"Activate... Vacuum Bazooka."

Immediately, the components that made up Ignis' Keyblade began to whir and shift their sizes and shapes in response to his command. The end of the weapon no longer even vaguely resembled a key, transforming into a massive gun barrel almost large enough in diameter for someone's entire body to fit inside; the shaft behind that thickened and became more heavily-armored, and several pieces extended from the hand-guards and braced against their wielder's shoulder. Then, shifting his stance slightly, Ignis aimed this gigantic new weapon directly at the largest chunk of the swarm.

For a moment, nothing seemed to happen. Then, a sound like rushing wind filled the air as the gun-barrel end of the transformed Keyblade began to pull everything in toward it. Loose stones and trash came first, but before long one of the larger Fanboys was pulled in as well, clogging up the entire barrel with its bulk. For a few moments, the creature's body gradually began to glow with some sort of reddish energy welling up from inside the Keyblade; then, as Ignis finally released the button he had pressed to activate this transformation, it was sent flying back down into the swarm like a meteorite, plowing through a dozen other Fanboys before finally impacting with the ground and exploding with such force that chunks of pavement were torn loose and the entire swarm around the impact zone was instantly destroyed. Riku glanced around at the destruction caused by this new form Ignis' Keyblade had taken, and his jaw dropped; he had managed to take out nearly a third of what was left of the swarm in a single attack.

"Damn," he said, returning his Keyblade to its usual form and then clutching his shoulder, "That thing's got one hell of a kick... I always forget that when I haven't used it in a while."

A few seconds passed, and then he shrugged it off, glancing down at his Keyblade for a moment before hopping back down from the roof and getting started on what was left of the swarm. He had noticed that his Keyblade's power supply was running low after that last attack, but didn't consider that to be too much of a problem; the weapons never seemed to go totally empty in the middle of a fight, after all. For a moment he wondered just where it was that Keyblades got their power, as he had remembered many swarms in the past where his seemed to hover just above "empty" for an entire swarm and yet never seem to go any lower than that until the battle was done. Before long, however, he shook those thoughts off and went back to his duty-_-_exterminating the Fangirls, in whatever form they may take.

* * *

"They're out there again," Naminé said, pointing up toward the Fangirl Detection System's computer screens. "Those other guys who fight the Fangirls... that has to be them."

It was just as she said-_-_among the cluster of pink representing Fangirls on the screen, there were also two of the simple numbers that appeared when the system didn't have a predefined symbol for someone, this time a four and a five. And wherever those numbers went, Fangirls soon started to drop off of the map; the one represented by the number four seemed to be especially powerful, managing to clear out a huge crowd of Fangirls in an instant shortly after one of the group had suddenly approached him.

"This is our chance to finally see them in action," Vexen said, clenching his fists and almost shaking as he watched what was taking place on the screen. "Naminé, set up the Dimensional Hippievan this instant. I must get over there before they've wiped out that swarm!"

The little girl nodded and quietly went to work, programming the coordinates into the Dimensional Hippievan's autopilot systems as always. When she was finished, she turned and waved to the old scientist as he left, followed shortly afterward by two non-numbered members who had been hanging around in the room with her and Lexaeus before.

"Hmm," Lexaeus said, watching Vexen as he left, "It's been a while since I've seen him this excited about something."

Naminé nodded again, smiling slightly.

"Yeah," she said, "He must really want to figure out more about those other Fangirl exterminators, whoever they are."

"Well, he is a scientist," the large man said, crossing his arms and turning to watch the battle play out on the maps in front of him. "Figuring out more about things is just what he does. Who knows what kind of shape this Organization would be in right now without him..."

They wouldn't have the Fangirl Detection System, for one thing; that was perhaps Vexen's single biggest contribution to the way the Organization functioned. In the early years, before it had been completed, even a seemingly-simple task such as calculating the Fangirlism level of an individual creature required a fresh sample of residual energy, expensive equipment, and pages of complex mathematical equations; now, the same thing could be accomplished by a few minutes of automated scanning. While Lexaeus had to admit he did miss the rush that always used to come over the older members when they were right on the verge of discovering something new back then, Fangirl extermination was certainly easier now that they had the results of all those discoveries already figured ahead of time.

Several minutes passed during which the room was totally silent aside from the beeps of the Fangirl Detection System; with only two of the Organization's quietest members inside, the room seemed almost empty. Finally, a slightly different beep sounded, signifying that the Dimensional Hippievan had reached its destination; Naminé looked up from her drawing just as the three Organization symbols appeared on the map, departing the Hippievan not far from the swarm.

"Hmm... it looks like the two Fangirl extermination squads will meet at last," Lexaeus said, noticing just how close the two groups were on the screen. "Let's hope this 'first contact' will be a peaceful one."

* * *

Ignis and Riku stood back to back in the middle of a horde of Fanboys, each clobbering any that dared to approach them with their respective Keyblades and sending them flying back into the crowd. Whenever one was destroyed, it seemed like two more would take its place; when they had jumped into this segment of the swarm, only a few dozen of the creatures had been present, but before long the rest joined in. Now, it seemed as if the entire swarm-_-_or, at least, what was left of it-_-_was attacking them at once.

"Well, that's convenient," Ignis mumbled, glancing out over the swarm and readying his Keyblade for another attack. "Guess we won't have to waste any time tracking 'em down now..."

Before either of them could take another swing at the Fanboys around them, however, a rumbling noise from a few yards away caught their attention. The entire swarm stopped for a moment, glancing around and trying to determine the source of the noise; Riku was about to take this opportunity to attack them while they were off guard, but stopped when he noticed just what it was that had distracted them.

"Wait a second... is that a van up there?"

Ignis looked up and confirmed what Riku had said-_-_there was, indeed, something that looked a lot like a blue Volkswagen van sitting on the roof of a nearby building, its front bumper just inches away from the edge. For a moment, Keybearers and Fanboys alike stared up at the out-of-place vehicle; it was too high up to get a good look inside, so it was impossible to tell who was driving it. A few seconds later, the occupants of the van revealed themselves as the driver's-side door swung open and a tall man in a black cloak hopped out, followed shortly afterward by two other cloaked strangers from the sliding door on the opposite side.

"Black cloaks," Riku gasped, "It's... those guys Master Ansem mentioned earlier..."

"Yeah," Ignis said, "Organization XIII. What're they doing here?"

Before they could ponder that question much more, they had their answer-_-_Vexen leaped down from the roof and landed feet-first on the street below, then immediately summoned his shield and delivered a powerful blow to three of the Fanboys directly in front of him. One of the other two Organization members took the fire escape instead, while the tallest of the three held his position atop the building and summoned a bow in a flash of yellow-green energy. Ignis and Riku just stared at the newcomers for a few moments, then shrugged and went back to what they were doing before-_-_wiping out the rest of the swarm.

"What are these things?", Estera asked, finally catching up to Vexen and summoning her staff, "They look almost like... male Fangirls. But the last time I checked, the Fangirlization process only works on females..."

"It appears they've found a way around that problem," the old scientist said, shuddering slightly. One of the Fanboys in front of him began to charge up a ball of fire in its hand, but it was smashed aside by another swing of Vexen's shield before it could throw it. "Try not to destroy them all this time, I'd like to have at least one to bring back as a test subject."

She nodded slightly, blocking a punch from one of the creatures with her staff and then countering with a sweep that knocked it off of its feet. Four arrows quickly pinned it to the pavement below, and the bespectacled girl glanced up to the masked man on the roof, giving him a thumbs-up before turning back toward Vexen.

"Will this do?"

He trapped a dozen of the creatures in front of him in solid ice with a wave of cold, then turned his head back toward the pinned Fanboy and smiled slightly.

"Yes, I suppose that one will suffice," he said, "Though I'd rather not have it right here in the middle of all this fighting. Could you relocate the swarm for us, Estera?"

She nodded once again and immediately went to work, raising her staff in the direction of the noisy mob of Fanboys and generating waves of fear-inducing energy that washed over them. She began to walk toward them, and they backed away; even Riku and Ignis, accidentally caught in the attack due to their location in the middle of the swarm, suddenly began to feel a chill down their spine and an unshakeable nervousness that they couldn't quite identify the cause of. Suspecting that it was the work of the Fanboys, they both charged forward in an attempt to get out of the center of the swarm, slashing away with their Keyblades and sending the already-disoriented creatures flying as they went. Before long, they had reached the outside edge of the crowd, escaping the range of the fear-inducing energy waves in the process.

"Whew," Riku said, breathing heavily and desperately wishing he was allowed to remove his helmt, "That's better..."

"Yeah... not sure what happened back there," Ignis said, leaning most of his weight on his Keyblade as he took a quick break from the fighting. "But I don't think it was the Fanboys... look at 'em."

He pointed in the swarm's direction; Riku noticed that the creatures were all backing away as if terrified, and with a closer look he could tell that the cloaked girl on the other end, with long, black hair and some sort of staff-like weapon, seemed to be herding them in their direction.

"What's she doing to them?"

"No idea," Ignis said, shaking off the last of the fear-wave's effects and returning to a battle-ready stance. "But it looks like those things are pretty distracted by it, whatever it is. Whaddya say we take 'em out now?"

Riku nodded, readying his Keyblade as well, and the two charged back toward the swarm. As they cut through the horde with their oddly-shaped weapons, arrows rained down from the nearby rooftop, destroying the lesser Fanboys in a single shot and pinning down or crippling the more powerful types. Estera, now satisfied with the distance she had generated between the swarm and Vexen's captured test subject, stopped focusing her powers on the Fanboys' minds and began to attack them with her staff instead, separating the floating orb from the top of the weapon and sending it into the crowd to snipe at them with translucent bolts of energy while lashing out at any who got too close. Vexen sent blasts of frigid air and sharpened ice flying through the swarm, freezing or destroying several with each shot and then finishing off any who survived with blows from his shield. Before long, the two groups met in the middle of the shrinking swarm, but each side was too busy to say anything; exterminating the Fanboys before they could cause too much damage came first.

A few minutes later, the swarm was all but gone. The tall, masked Organization member on the roof finally jumped down, picking off a few stragglers from the Fanboy horde with his bow before dematerializing it; he then walked over to join the other two, who were standing just a few yards away from the Keybearers. Estera dematerialized her weapon as well, but Vexen kept his at the ready; though he hoped that his first face-to-face meeting with the mysterious armored Fangirl-fighters was a civil one, he was well aware that there was the possibility of a fight.

The two non-numbered members took a few moments to rest, glancing over toward the captured Fanboy on the ground to make sure it was still there. Before they could do much else, however, the sound of metallic footsteps behind them snapped them back to attention.

"So," Ignis said, taking a few more steps toward the black-cloaked group and pointing his Keyblade in their direction, "You guys must be Organization XIII."


	21. Fire and Ice

**CHAPTER 20**  
_~ Fire and Ice ~_

"So... you guys must be Organization XIII."

Ignis raised his Keyblade and pointed it in the direction of the black-cloaked trio, causing Vexen to instinctively brace himself for an attack and the two non-numbered members to hesitate a bit, unsure of what to do. The Organization's encounters with outside forces, whether they be the governments of various countries or criminal elements, were rarely friendly ones; on the other hand, this was the first time they had come across members of another Fangirl-extermination group. There was no precedent for what to do in such a case, so they stood at the ready and awaited any orders from their superior officer.

"That's correct," Vexen said, stepping closer but not lowering his shield an inch. "We are indeed members of Organization XIII. I am Number Four and head scientist of the Organization... you may call me Vexen."

Ignis reached up with his spare hand and pressed a button on the side of his helmet, causing the visor to lower automatically and revealing the odd combination of tanned skin and reddish-orange hair underneath.

"Vexen, huh?", he said, looking the old man over carefully. "That's funny... you look a whole lot like somebody else I've heard of. Does the name Even Rimewind ring a bell?"

For a moment, Vexen's eye twitched. He was certain he had never met the young man standing before him in his years before the Organization; that would have been impossible, given his apparent age. But yet, somehow, this complete stranger knew his true name.

"Yes," he said, hesitating a bit at first. "It's been a while since I've gone by that name. Now tell me... who are _you?_"

"The name's Ignis," the armored stranger said, putting his visor back up with another press of the same button. He then pointed back toward the other Keybearer standing a few feet behind him. "Oh yeah, and the little guy here is Riku."

Vexen scoffed; the so-called "little guy" couldn't have been more than an inch shorter than Ignis was. Presumably he had meant "little" in terms of age rather than size, though the fact that his face was completely concealed by his helmet made it hard to tell if there was much of a difference there, either.

"Riku... that name sounds oddly familiar," the masked man standing behind Vexen said. Estera turned toward him and nodded slightly in response; she, too, had heard that name before, though she couldn't remember where.

For a moment, the parking lot was silent as the two groups stared each other down, neither side sure what was going to happen next. Vexen and Ignis both seemed ready for a fight, while the lower-ranking fighters behind them both seemed hesitant to start anything without figuring out what was going on first. Before long, however, it became clear which way this was going to go.

"You know, I appreciate the help with those weird male Fangirl things," Ignis said, shifting his feet slightly into a combat-ready stance. "But the last time I checked... your Organization was an enemy of the Keybearers. I'd suggest you clear out now and let us finish up here."

"_Enemies?_", Vexen spat, almost growling at his armored counterpart but managing to restrain himself. "Unless I'm forgetting something, this is the first time anyone among us has ever met any of you... Keybearers, was it?"

"Maybe so," Ignis said, "But Master Ansem has declared you _and _your Organization to be enemies... and that's enough for me."

If Vexen's eye had been twitching before, it was now going absolutely nuts. Had he just said "Master Ansem?" At first, he couldn't imagine this could be the same Ansem he was thinking of, but after a few moments, suddenly things started to make sense. _Of course_ this was the same Ansem that Vexen had once known-_-_that explained everything! There was no other way that this complete stranger would know not only that Vexen was a member of the Organization, but his previous identity as well. It now appeared that, while Xehanort and Ansem had split their research team in two after repeated disagreements on the origin of Fangirls, both had eventually ended up taking the same path later in their lives: developing a specialized fighting force to deal with the problem.

"_Master _Ansem? I see. So I suppose this means that old fool didn't give up on Fangirl research after all."

Ignis almost seemed to _snarl_in response to this; apparently, something Vexen said had managed to set him off. While previously he was simply pointing his Keyblade in the older man's general direction, he now had both hands on its hilt in a battle-ready position.

"Don't you _dare _talk about Master Ansem that way!"

Before anyone could say anything further, the coppery-armored warrior charged forward, attempting to smash Vexen with a powerful overhead swing. He raised his shield just in time to deflect the blow, then pushed back with all his strength, sending his attacker flying back through the air but landing on his feet.

"Pretty strong for an old man," Ignis said, catching himself and sliding back a bit as he landed. "But I bet you couldn't handle a hit like that without your shield."

Vexen rolled his eyes.

"That _is _the purpose of using a shield, you blithering idiot."

Before any more words could be exchanged, Ignis ran in for another attack, this time swinging at Vexen's unprotected side. It wasn't unprotected for long, however, as the old scientist's reflexes were still sharp enough for him to shift position so that his shield deflected this attack as well. He hopped back a bit and then took a swing of his own, narrowly missing as Ignis jumped out of the way. When the Keybearer charged in for another attack, Vexen blocked it with his shield and then took a swing at him with his other hand, producing a loud _clang _as his fist collided with the side of his opponent's helmet.

Ignis staggered back a bit, then reached up and felt around, noticing that there was now a sizable dent in the metal protecting the left side of his head.

"That was one hell of a punch! What are you guys, robots or something?"

Vexen laughed.

"Quite an accusation from a man who chooses to cover himself in metal."

While the two repeatedly clashed in the middle of the parking lot, the two Organization members and Riku on the sidelines could do nothing but stand back and watch. Riku suspected that Ignis would want him to jump in and get involved in the battle alongside him, but he wasn't so sure that this Organization was his enemy just yet, regardless of whether Ansem saw them as such. At the very least, they didn't seem to be openly hostile. On the other side of the field, Estera had taken a small notebook out from one of her cloak's many pockets and was furiously jotting something down; the masked man next to her glanced over, but found it difficult to read her handwriting, especially with only his mask's built-in sensors to rely upon for any sort of sight.

"Do you suppose the two of us should aid Vexen?"

"I'm not sure," Estera said, glancing up from her writing for a moment. "He seems to be on the defensive, but... he's nowhere near full power yet. He's just testing his opponent's strength right now."

"I would not be surprised if his opponent has not reached full power, either."

The dark-haired girl nodded.

"Right. And then there's still the other one... hard to say how strong he might be. These Keybearers don't seem to give off much energy when they're just standing around."

There was a brief pause as the two watched Vexen fling a massive icicle in Ignis' direction; rather than dodging out of the way, he took a swing at it with his Keyblade, shattering it into thousands of pieces and sending frozen shrapnel flying all over the pavement.

"I suppose for now... we should just watch."

* * *

At about that time, Terra, Aqua, and Ven were walking back toward the old church that served as the hiding place for the Keybearers' headquarters. Zagan, Irael, and D'aal had split off from the rest of the group in order to stock up on various supplies they might need; apparently, the only thing they had brought with any day-to-day use had been money, and none of the three had any clothes with them aside from the uniforms they had been wearing when they arrived. Just as the three were about to open the ancient door that led into the building, Ven noticed a crackle of static from the Keyblade handle at his belt and paused to listen to whatever message might be coming in.

"This is Riku," the familiar voice of the silver-haired teenager came through, "Requesting backup for Ignis of the Elementals at the swarm site..."

He proceeded to list the coordinates of his exact location over the radio system, repeating them several times just in case some of the numbers were rendered inaudible by the buzz of static. The three plainclothes Keybearers stood in front of the church, just listening to the transmission, until finally one of them spoke.

"What's Ignis doing, trying to take on a swarm by himself?", Aqua asked, frowning slightly. "He could get himself killed out there!"

"Well, he's not quite alone," Terra said. "Riku's not quite a Keyblade Master yet, but he's pretty tough for a kid."

"I wonder what's going on out there," Ven said, glancing over in the direction of the coordinates that Riku had sent. "I can't see much from here, but... that spot's kind of far off."

"Yeah," Terra said, reaching down and unclipping his Keyblade from his belt. "Riku didn't sound too urgent... but I'm guessing Ignis has gotten himself into some trouble if he couldn't call in for backup himself."

Ven turned and looked up toward the tallest of the three Keybearers, noticing that he was holding the handle of his Keyblade. A moment later, the weapon's miniaturized parts appeared in sequence around it as they returned to their normal size and assembled themselves into the heavy-looking golden shape of Terra' Keyblade.

"Hey, are you going out there?"

"That's right," the taller man said, glancing down at Ven and smiling for just a moment before letting his face return to the focused look he had before. "You two stay back and let the guys inside know I'm out there making sure Ignis comes back in one piece."

Aqua sighed, but nodded and stood aside while Terra transformed his Keyblade into its vehicle form and lifted off. She took a look at Ven, noticing that he had gripped the handle of his Keyblade as well but had not unclipped it; just a few years ago, he probably would have taken off after Terra without a second thought. Before she could get caught up thinking about the past, she shook her head and headed through the church doors with Ven following not far behind.

* * *

Ignis slid back across the pavement, his armor scraping away at the surface of the asphalt as he went flying from a direct hit from Vexen's shield and crashing to the ground. He wasn't really injured, but the blow had certainly knocked the wind out of him; when he finally came to a stop next to where Riku was standing, it took him a few seconds to get back on his feet.

"Hey, kid," he said, glancing to his younger comrade, "You planning on just standing there and watching while I get slammed into the ground like that?"

Riku shook his head, then readied his Keyblade-_-_one of the ordinary ones that all of those who had not yet become Keyblade Masters used, though it was a bit more curved in shape than most. He took a step forward and stood beside Ignis, prepared to back him up in battle against Vexen regardless of his doubts about whether or not he was really their enemy.

"Looks like they're going to gang up on him," Estera said, glancing over to the masked man beside her. "Think it's time to get involved now, Slobodan?"

"I suppose so," he said, holding out one hand and materializing his bow once again. "Vexen may have trouble handling two of them at once..."

Estera summoned her staff in a ripple of barely-visible energy, then watched as Ignis charged toward Vexen once again-_-_this time with Riku following after him, apparently preparing to attack from a different direction to throw the older man off. Slobodan pulled back his bowstring, causing an arrow to appear from a swirl of greenish-yellow energy; for a moment, this energy shifted shape, fully materializing once the arrowhead had transformed into some sort of large horned beetle. Just as Riku was about to jump in and attack, he let the bug-arrow fly.

"Oof!"

Riku was knocked out of the air as the fist-sized insect smashed right into his armored chest, exploding into a flash of energy on impact and slamming him to the ground. He started to stand up, confused as to where the sudden attack had come from, but before he had a chance to rejoin Ignis in the battle against Vexen, he noticed that the other two Organization members had stepped between them, each holding their weapons. He stood up and leapt back a bit, putting some distance between himself and the two who had just joined the battle and readying his Keyblade in a defensive postion.

"We had not planned on joining this battle," the masked man said, readying another heavy beetle-tipped arrow and aiming it in Riku's direction, "That said, however... Vexen is our superior officer in the Organization, and we will not allow you to harm him."

Riku grunted in annoyance, then charged forward. He narrowly avoided the second bug-arrow, then raised his Keyblade in an attempt to attack the bow-wielding Organization member who had fired it before he could hit him with another one. As he swung his weapon down, he found it suddenly stopped-_-_not by either of his opponents' weapons, but by Slobodan's gloved hand.

"What the..."

He tried to wrench his weapon free, but found that his opponent's strength was a good deal greater than he had expected. While Riku was distracted by his attempts to regain control of his Keyblade, Estera swung at him with her staff; it was at that moment that Slobodan let go of the Keyblade's handle, and Riku went tumbling to the ground, thrown off balance and knocked back from the force of the blow.

As he stood up, he noticed a buzzing sound rapidly approaching him from behind and spun around just in time to find the same bug-arrow he had dodged before flying straight at his face, this time using its wings in order to change direction in midair. He swung his Keyblade upward into its path and destroyed it, causing the bug and arrow both to disappear in a flash of the same yellowish energy they were created from. He turned back toward his two opponents, readying his Keyblade once again but not making any moves just yet.

"Bugs, huh?", he said, glancing over to the source of the beetle-tipped arrows. "I heard you guys had some sort of weird powers, but... that's not quite what I expected."

Before any of them could launch another attack, they were nearly bowled over as Vexen went flying between them, pursued shortly afterward by Ignis. The Keybearer rained down on the older man with a flurry of blows, not managing to penetrate his shield but still powerful enough to rapidly drive him backward. Finally, once he had pushed Vexen up against the wall of a nearby building, he held up his Keyblade and once again gave a command into its handle.

"Activate... Heat Laser."

The key-like prongs on the end of the weapon disassembled themselves and shifted around, rearranging into the shape of a gun barrel and sights in a matter of seconds. He raised the weapon, holding it with both hands the same way one would aim a rifle, and then let loose with a series of red beams of energy. Vexen flinched, expecting a direct hit from the heat rays, but instead he only heard a grinding sound above him. As he looked upward, he barely had time to raise his shield before a pile of rubble, carved loose from the building behind him, came toppling down over him.

Slobodan and Estera immediately moved in to attack Ignis, the tall man in the mask readying several arrows at once while his smaller companion released the black orb from the top of her staff and began to charge it with energy. Riku jumped into the path of their attacks, rapidly spinning his Keyblade to deflect the arrows in mid-flight and then running forward through Estera's barrage of translucent energy bolts, showing a level of speed far beyond what he had managed earlier and avoiding every one of them. Within a fraction of a second he reached Estera, slashing down at her with his weapon; she managed to block it with her staff, but was still shoved backward, her hands stinging from the force of the blow for several minutes afterward.

"Hmm," Slobodan said in his unusual robotic voice, "It seems this one is more powerful than he first appeared..."

"You're telling me," Estera groaned, briefly holding her staff in one hand to stretch the other one. "I'm going to be sore tomorrow, I just know it..."

Ignis laughed a bit, turning away from the pile of rubble that had buried Vexen; there had been no movement from beneath it in the past minute or so, so he figured that the old man was not getting back up. He took a few steps toward the two Organization members and stopped near where Riku was standing, his Keyblade reverting to its usual form as he went.

"So... are you two going to give up, or what?", he said, pointing his weapon in the direction of his black-cloaked opponents. "The old man was the strongest out of the three of you, right? You can't seriously want to keep fighting after what just happened to him."

Estera rolled her eyes slightly and sighed.

"We never _wanted _to fight in the first place."

"Correct," Slobodan added, "We will only continue fighting if you continue attacking us, or make any attempt to harm Vexen further."

For a few moments, the older of the two Keybearers just stood there, apparently deciding what to do next. Riku glanced around through the visor of his helmet, not sure what was going to happen next; he kept his Keyblade at the ready just in case, but silently hoped that the fight was over. Before too long, Ignis had made his decision-_-_and, unfortunately, it wasn't a decision that was likely to lead to an end of fighting.

"You know... I bet Master Ansem would give anything for a chance to interrogate a member of Organization XIII."

For a moment, he turned his head back toward the rubble where Vexen had fallen.

"And not just any member, but one of the _founders_... I think I'm going to take the old man back with me. Riku, can you hold off the other two while I dig him out of there?"

The younger Keybearer nodded slightly, shifting into his usual combat stance and preparing for incoming attacks. As Ignis began to walk over toward the collapsed side of the building, Slobodan rapidly launched a series of arrows in his direction while Estera lunged forward and swung her staff at Riku, hoping to at least keep him from deflecting the arrows even if she couldn't keep up with him for long. Riku's Keyblade clashed against Estera's staff, causing sparks to fly as the metal of the two weapons ground against each other; unfortunately, it turned out that Ignis didn't need any help from Riku to avoid a few arrows, and though one of them managed to glance off of the side of his armor and leave a very visible gouge in the metal as it went, the others missed or were smashed out of the air by a swing of his Keyblade.

Just as Riku had managed to overpower Estera and throw her to the ground, Ignis had reached the pile of concrete and plaster that had fallen down ontop of the Organization's head scientist. As he reached down to push aside the first large chunk of stone, Slobodan fired another arrow, this one with a massive stag beetle in place of a normal arrowhead. Ignis heard it whizzing through the air toward him, but when he turned to deflect it, the beetle's wings spread out and went into overdrive, propelling it forward too quickly for the Keybearer to stop it. The beetle's massive jaws sprung open just before impact, then slammed shut, cutting through Ignis' armor with a shower of sparks and continuing on to dig into the clothing and skin underneath.

"Arrrgh!"

With a grunt of combined pain and annoyance, he turned and reached down with one of his hands, grabbing onto the shaft of the arrow and yanking it out. The bug on the end came loose along with it, lightly splattering the outside of his coppery-colored armor as it went and leaving a trail of fresh bloodspots on the ground as he threw it down and it destroyed it with a stomp. Seeing that Slobodan had readied another of the dangerous bug-tipped arrows, he spun around and aimed his Keyblade in his direction, transforming it back into the rifle-like shape he had used against Vexen (or, at least, the wall above him) before.

"Don't move," Ignis snarled, "Either of you... unless you wanna lose an arm or two."

For a few moments, the two paused; then, slowly, they lowered their weapons. Riku immediately stepped in front of them with his Keyblade at the ready, sighing slightly; this was a side of Ignis he hadn't really seen before, but he was still in charge, so it was his duty to follow him. Once Ignis was convinced that the two wouldn't try anything, he lowered his weapon and returned it to its normal shape, then went back to moving the chunks of rock away from Vexen's unconscious body.

When he moved the largest chunk of rubble, however, he soon found out that the old man wasn't quite as unconscious as he thought-_-_the first thing he saw was the shiny blue metal of his shield, which came flying upward at full force and smashing him in the face. Ignis staggered backward and nearly fell over, the visor of his armor shattered and his face cut up in several spots from the broken shards. Despite the fact that the visor was made of special reinforced glass that could easily withstand bullets, Vexen's shield had smashed it into a million pieces with one good hit. By the time the Keybearer shrugged off the attack, Vexen was standing at his full height, stepping out of the rubble with his shield held forward. He laughed at the sight of his opponent's damaged armor, a wide grin forming on his face.

"Knocked unconscious by a few little rocks? You really believed that you could be done with me that easily?", he said, laughing again and brushing a few stray strands of brownish-blonde hair away from his face with his spare hand. "Hmph... how foolish. You truly have no understanding of the sort of power I possess."

Vexen raised up his hand, causing sub-zero winds and snowflakes to swirl through the air around him, and then suddenly knelt down and slammed the ground. Instantly, a thick patch of solid ice formed on the ground, rapidly spreading in Ignis' direction, moving faster and faster as it went. He tried to shift his Keyblade back to its heat-rifle form, but a blinking red light on the handle alerted him to the unfortunate fact that the weapon no longer had enough stored power left to do such a thing.

"What?", he gasped, "No! These things _never _run out of power! Not now!"

He began to back away, but before he could try anything else the creeping sheet of ice reached his armored boots and froze over them, pinning his feet to the ground. He glanced down and attempted to hack away at the ice with the sharper parts of his Keyblade, but before he could chip away much of it, foot-thick crystalline walls suddenly erupted around him in all directions, trapping him in a hexagonal pillar of solid ice. Vexen stood back up and cracked his neck, then walked back over toward the two members he had trained, stopping right next to Riku.

"Don't worry about him," the old scientist said, patting the younger warrior on the shoulder with one hand. "He'll have dulled senses for a few days, perhaps a bit of minor frostbite damage on his extremities or a slight case of hypothermia. Certainly nothing life-threatening, if you Keybearers know anything about proper medical care."

Riku just stood, almost as frozen as Ignis was; he had thought that the two were about evenly matched, but that was before he had seen the extent of what the old man's power over ice could do. Even considering that it was a surprise attack and that Ignis' Keyblade was running low on power, being able to instantly trap someone like that was impressive. For a moment, he wondered just what the limits on these powers were-_-_if the Organization's _head scientist _was this powerful, what would their true warriors be like?

"Estera, Slobodan... relocate my test subject to the back of the Hippievan," he said, walking past Riku and stopping just short of the two non-numbered members. "I will join you shortly."

They both nodded, then rushed back over toward the location of the pinned Fanboy, Estera using her power over fear to keep the creature cowering in place while Slobodan dematerialized his bow along with the quartet of arrows that held it to the ground. He then raised one hand to the sky and snapped his fingers, summoning hordes of insects from the surrounding city. Hundreds upon hundreds of cockroaches swarmed around the fallen Fanboy, clutching onto all parts of its body; then, with an infusion of yellowish-green energy, each of the creepy-crawlies grew to several times its ordinary size and spread its wings. Within a few minutes, the cloud of buzzing, clicking giant roaches had flown their shivering cargo to the top of the building where the Dimensional Hippievan was parked, followed shortly afterward by Vexen's two followers. Slobodan snapped his fingers again and the roaches were freed from his control, scuttling off to the dark corners of the city where they usually lived as they shrank back down to their usual size.

"Let's see," Estera said, popping open the back door of the van and looking around, "Looks like we have some chains back here... think these will work?"

The masked man knelt down slightly and took a look into the back of the van, spotting some very thick steel chains that looked like they were intended for barricading a door. He then nodded, grabbed them, and walked over toward the Fanboy.

* * *

"Now," Vexen said, glancing down at Riku, "What did you say your name was, again?"

"Riku," he said, somewhat nervously. Though he had grown quite a bit since he had joined the Keybearers the year before, Vexen still towered over him.

"Riku... right," the old man said, nodding slightly. "I know you're probably concerned for your overly aggressive comrade's health at the moment, but I assure you that he will be fine. Before you leave, however, I have a few questions I would like to ask of you."

Riku nodded; he wasn't sure what the old man wanted to know, but if answering his questions meant getting back to headquarters in better shape than the way Ignis ended up, he figured it couldn't hurt to go along with it for now.

"Go ahead."

"Good. Now, first of all... was your hometown located on a small Japanese island named Innenjima, by chance?"

Hidden away beneath the dark visor of his helmet, the boy's eyes widened. How did this old man know where he came from? His hometown had been destroyed in a record-breaking Fangirl swarm over a year ago, and though an event so catastrophic had been in the news for months afterward, nearly everyone who lived there had been presumed dead and no names had yet been made public.

"I take it from your stunned silence that the answer is a yes," Vexen said, smiling. "Now, on to the second question. Could you please remove your helmet for a moment? I'd like to confirm a suspicion I have about your identity."

For a few seconds, Riku hesitated; he then figured that if Vexen already knew where he lived just from hearing his name, it would be hard for showing him his face to do any harm. Besides, all of the Organization members had been fighting with their hoods taken down, their identities clear to anyone who happened to be watching. It would only be fair to give them the same respect.

"Okay," he said, reaching up and gripping the sides of his helmet, "But only for a second. Got it?"

"Understood."

Riku removed his helmet, letting his silvery hair flop out and drape down over his armored shoulders. It was immediately obvious that this boy was exactly who Vexen had suspected him of being-_-_the resemblance to Otonashi was undeniable. Vexen smiled, and shortly afterward Riku covered his face in armor once again.

"Yes... there's no doubt about it," he said, reaching into his pocket and jotting down a few quick notes on a pad of paper hidden somewhere within. "You are Riku Hashimoto. How ironic, that you of all people would end up working for Ansem..."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

Vexen turned and began to walk away, dispelling the walls of ice that surrounded Ignis with a wave of his hand. The unconscious Keybearer crashed to the ground, causing the frost that coated his armor to break up and fly off in chunks all over the pavement. Riku immediately rushed to his side, briefly forgetting the questions he had for the mysterious old man.

"You'll learn someday," Vexen said, turning around just before leaping up onto the building's roof. "But I will tell you right now... you were not the only survivor of that Fangirl swarm."

With that, Vexen took a flying leap up onto the fire escape, rattling the rusty metal as he landed. One more jump and he reached the roof, hopping into the driver's seat of the Hippievan seconds later and driving it off the edge of the roof. Just before it looked as if the vehicle was going to come crashing to the ground, it vanished in a flash of energy, leaving Riku behind with even more questions than before.

* * *

Barely a minute later, Terra arrived on his Keyblade-glider, landing near the pile of rubble Vexen had once been buried in and hopping off of the vehicle before returning it to its usual form. Upon seeing that only Ignis and Riku were present, he fully miniaturized his Keyblade and clipped it to his belt; as far as he could tell, there would be no more need for a weapon now.

"What happened out here?", he asked, surveying the scene. Aside from the usual dents and scrapes that came with all Fangirl swarms, there was an unnatural amount of ice lying around, not to mention the building with several large chunks of concrete missing from one of its walls. "Are you guys okay?"

"Yeah," Riku said, "I'm fine. But Ignis... I'm not sure what kind of shape he'll be in when he comes back around."

Terra walked over toward the other two Keybearers, Ignis lying on the ground and Riku crouched down by his side making sure that he still had a pulse and wasn't having any difficulty breathing. He was still alive, thankfully, but no matter how long Terra stared at him he couldn't figure out exactly what had caused the younger Keybearer to get into the condition he was in.

"He's covered in ice from head to toe," Terra said, "What kind of Fangirls have you two been fighting out here?"

"It wasn't the Fangirls," Riku said, "Well, there were these weird male Fangirl things, but it wasn't _just_ them we were fighting. The one who did this to Ignis... was a member of Organization XIII."


	22. The Experiment

**CHAPTER 21**  
_~ The Experiment ~_

Axel pulled his cloak on and left his room, walking down the hall away from the numbered members' living quarters and toward the stairs. It was almost time for him to get started down at the kitchen, after all; before long, the early breakfast crowd would start to fill in, and he was one of only two members in the entire Organization that had powers suited for kitchen duty.

As he passed Roxas' still-empty room, however, he couldn't help but sigh. It had been nearly two weeks since he had disappeared, and still there was no sign of him; at least the room was no longer roped off with bright-yellow caution tape, now that Roxas' disappearance was all but confirmed to be a kidnapping and Zexion's investigation team had finished searching the area for any evidence. A few seconds passed before the spiky-haired man realized just how creepy it would look if he was caught staring into the bedroom of a fifteen-year-old; he didn't even want to imagine what kind of screwball ideas the Fangirls would get from _that. _Shaking his head slightly, he picked up his pace a bit and continued on down the stairs.

When he got there, he was surprised to find half a dozen more members waiting for him than he expected. He raised an eyebrow, wondering for a moment what was going on; he hadn't been _that _late, so this had to mean that a bunch of others came down for breakfast earlier than usual.

"Wow," he said, glancing around at the group gathered around one of the cafeteria's large tables. "I mean, Lexaeus, you're always up this early... but Vexen? Zexion? Been a while since I've seen you guys down here first thing in the morning."

Vexen laughed, while Lexaeus only cracked a slight smile and Zexion didn't even look up from whatever it was he was reading. Joining them at their table were Slobodan, Estera, and Xigbar; another table nearby was filled with a variety of non-numbered members, including the rest of the early-morning crowd who usually joined Lexaeus for breakfast. After looking over them for a few moments, he headed off into the kitchen and got to work.

Summoning his chakrams, he placed a griddle over each and sent them flying around the room with tiny flames flickering into existence beneath them. He rapidly mixed up some pancake batter and plopped several globs of it onto one of the griddles with one hand, cracking several eggs with the other and dropping them onto the other griddle. As he watched over the two rotating chakrams, he summoned a second set with a bit of effort and started more pancakes on each of them. As the pancakes cooked on one side, he caused his chakrams to launch them into the air and then catch them as they came down on the opposite side, sizzling a bit as they landed. Before long, the quartet of chakrams went flying out of the kitchen and delivering a plateful of pancakes to Vexen, Lexaeus, and Zexion, dropping some eggs on Xigbar's plate and then returning the last one back to Axel himself.

Before long, everyone in the cafeteria was munching away at their first meal of the day, and Axel stepped out of the kitchen and sat down at the table with the group of non-numbered members. Banbu waved as he approached, scooting over a bit to make room for the cat-eyed chef at the crowded table.

"So," he said, glancing around to the rest of the black-cloaked group, "What's gotten into the old guys over there? They're _never _at breakfast this early."

"No idea," Banbu said, shrugging. "Vexen and Xigbar were already here when I got here."

"I think I saw them looking at some little computer thing a while ago," Vi said, taking a big bite out of one of her pancakes and pausing a bit to finish chewing before she continued. "Maybe a phone, or something like that."

Axel snickered.

"Can't imagine those two fiddling around with a cellphone like a bunch of teenagers," he said, scarfing down another fried egg in a single gulp. "Aren't those things contraband around here, anyway? Some rule about not having stuff with Internet connections to avoid letting Fangirls slip in, or something like that."

"Must be something for Vexen's research," a pale-skinned girl with pointed ears added. She then returned to the magazine she had been reading, which was apparently about elves.

Axel nodded, glancing back over his shoulder to see if he could get a glimpse at what the older members were doing at the other table. There was no sign of anything resembling a cellphone, though Vexen had brought out a stack of notes which the other members were reading over.

"Yeah... that's probably it," he said, turning back to the non-numbered crowd. "Still... wonder what he's working on these days. Haven't heard too much new stuff coming out of that lab of his ever since the Fangirl Disconnection Project ended..."

* * *

Meanwhile, over at the other table, the gathered group of scientists (and Xigbar) were looking over the notes that Vexen had brought in. He had recently managed to crack the security systems on the phone that Zagan had used to transport himself, Irael, and D'aal through the Internet, and he had worked through the night to figure out the modifications to the phone's functionality.

"It's actually quite similar to the Dimensional Hippievan's systems," the old man said, passing out copies of his reports to Lexaeus and Zexion before continuing. "Except, of course, for the fact that it opens a portal into the Internet. I suppose that is how he was able to modify an ordinary phone to do such a thing-_-_the technology for accessing the Internet was already present."

"So," Zexion said, "All those years he was helping out with the base's computer systems, working with the Hippievan's engine system..."

"I don't know for sure," Vexen said, "It's possible that he had been planning something like this all along, but... from what little we know of his motivations, it appears that this apparent affiliation with the Fangirls is a recent development."

"Lemme guess," Xigbar said, taking a swig of something that was most likely far too alcoholic for the time of day, "This all started right around the time the Fangirls started acting different."

"Close," Vexen said, flipping through his notes. "It appears that these modifications were done to the phone sometime in early July of this year. In other words... exactly two months before we first noticed a change in the Fangirls."

Lexaeus furrowed his brow.

"So it's possible that Zagan's contact with the Fangirls is what caused them to evolve," he said, taking a drink from the glass of water in front of him.

"That is a possibility," Vexen said. "I'm sure all of you are aware of my theory that the Fangirls are being controlled by some sort of powerful entity within the Internet, a hypothetical 'Fangirl Queen.' Now, Zagan himself lacks the power necessary for such a thing-_-_"

"Plus he ain't exactly a 'queen,'" Xigbar added, snickering slightly and earning a brief glare from Vexen.

"Now, like I was saying... it's possible that Zagan was somehow involved with the creation of this entity," he continued. "Or, at the very least, he may have been responsible for enhancing an already-existing entity, aiding it to stretch its influence over a wider network of Fangirls rather than only commanding certain groups among them."

There was a brief pause, and then Slobodan turned toward the older members and spoke for the first time.

"Perhaps this is why the Fangirls suddenly had so much interest in Roxas in the last few months."

As the words from the artificial speaking device in Slobodan's mask reached Vexen's ears, the old man's eye twitched slightly. Almost immediately, an utterly disturbing thought popped into his head, as if triggered by what the masked man said. With Zagan being connected to the Fangirls as well as being the most likely candidate for Roxas' kidnapper, what if the boy was being held captive in Fangirl-controlled space, somewhere deep within the Internet?

"That... is a very real possibility, I'm afraid," he said, clearly appearing a bit shaken but not explaining why. He stood up from the table and picked up his plate, then continued. "Enough talk for now. I must get back to the lab and continue my experimentation with this device at once."

Xigbar glanced over toward the old scientist, frowning slightly.

"You gonna activate that thing inside the base?"

"Well, yes, that _is_ the best way to make sure it's fully functional. We can't have such an important device malfunctioning when we actually _need _it, after all."

"Yeah, yeah... but you know how the boss is about stuff with Internet connections," the one-eyed elf continued. "Turnin' that thing on _inside _ain't gonna go over too well if he finds out."

"Not to mention the chance of letting in Fangirls," Lexaeus added. "That's the reason we have that policy in the first place."

Vexen put his hand to his chin for a moment, thinking things over for a bit before speaking.

"True... I suppose testing inside the lab is out of the question, then. In that case... I'll have to find some alternative."

* * *

Far away in the underground headquarters of the Keybearers, Ansem and his followers were also sitting down for breakfast-_-_but, unlike the Organization's cafeteria, this one was rather crowded. Dozens of rank-and-file Keybearers, very few of which were actually wearing their armor at such an early hour, hustled about between the serving line and the several rows of long tables, quickly filling them up. As the last few of the soldiers filed in, the room was crammed almost to its full capacity; the last few Keybearers to arrive (who just happened to be Zagan, Irael, and D'aal) were forced to sit on the floor and eat their breakfast, unable to find even a single empty seat.

As the masses began to clear their plates and a few went back for seconds, Ansem stood up from the small table where he and the four Elementals sat, walking over to a podium conveniently placed nearby and attempting to get everyone's attention. Once they realized that their leader was preparing to give the day's announcements, most of the crowd quieted down; a few noisy stragglers needed to be jabbed with an elbow or shushed, but before long, the room was all but silent.

"Keybearers," he said, sweeping one hand out across the room in their direction, "I am pleased to announce that one of your ranks has stepped forward to apply for the Mark of Mastery exam."

There was a brief moment of silence, followed by a roar of applause from the crowd. Ignis sat up in his seat and took a look across the crowds of nameless soldiers for a few seconds before spotting the young Keybearer he was looking for-_-_Riku, who stood out like a sore thumb among the rest of the rather ordinary-looking bunch due to his odd silvery hair.

"As you all know, upon passing this test he will attain the rank of Keyblade Master," Ansem continued, "And with it, his own personalized Keyblade and armor. Please stand to be recognized... Riku Hashimoto."

Though a bit hesitant at first, Riku eventually stood, hopping up onto his seat so that he could be seen more easily. The applause that followed easily dwarfed the amount the crowd had given earlier; apparently, Riku had already earned a great deal of respect from the other soldiers despite the fact that he had not yet qualified as a Keyblade Master. A few among them even cheered, though the loudest noise was coming from the table where the Elementals sat; Ignis shouted at the top of his lungs in approval, though he avoided clapping to avoid further harming his bandaged and frostbitten hands, while Terra and Ven were a bit more subdued in their celebration. Aqua, in a moment of nearly-uncharacteristic enthusiasm, was almost jumping up and down with joy.

Once the excitement over Ansem's announcement died down and Riku was seated once again, the old man raised his hand toward the group and once again began to speak.

"Now, I also have somewhat more distressing news," he said, lowering his hand. "Yesterday, Ignis of the Elementals was injured in battle against a member of the group known as Organization XIII. Though he is recovering quite well, this act is a clear confirmation of what I have believed for a long time... that this shadowy Organization is no friend of the Keybearers."

Back at the Elementals' table, Terra sighed. Riku had explained what happened the day before, and from the sound of it, Ignis had pretty much brought this upon himself-_-_not a surprise, given his habit of being a bit too quick to resort to violence at the first sign of trouble. Even when he and Ven were still training to become Keyblade Masters, the redhead's temper and love of battle often got the best of him, and it appeared that two years was not enough to change that. What Ignis had done was no surprise, given the situation; Ansem's blind hatred for this Organization, however, came as a bit of a shock.

"Furthermore, the member of the Organization who did this is no stranger to me," Ansem continued. He reached into one of his pockets and produced a large, wanted-poster style photograph of an old man with long, brownish-blonde hair and bulging green eyes. "It was none other than my former colleague Even Rimewind... or 'Vexen,' as he is apparently calling himself now. According to reports from Riku and from Ignis himself, he has somehow acquired a vast degree of power over ice as well as a weapon resembling a large metal shield."

There was a wave of mumbling throughout the crowd, a mixture of fear and disbelief with a healthy amount of confusion thrown in; though Ansem and his closest friends among the Keybearers had all been aware of the mysterious powers the Organization possessed for quite some time, this was the first that the average soldier had heard of such a thing. Among those that made up the majority of the crowd, only the three leaning against the wall and Riku did not seem too surprised.

"Now, we have not yet been able to confirm the source of the Organization's powers," Ansem said, raising his hands a bit in an attempt to calm the crowd, "But from what Zagan, Irael, and D'aal have told me, it seems that these powers develop in those who have been exposed to the Fangirls, with the aid of an unusual device that they call a 'Zero Gear.'"

There was a brief pause as the crowd's mumbling intensified; a few soldiers wondered why _they _hadn't developed mysterious superpowers, though their leader's next words quickly silenced such thoughts.

"It is my belief, however, that no good can come of such powers. They are clearly connected to the strange abilities the Fangirls themselves possess, and those who use them may be permanently tainted by such power. There's no telling what may happen if they lose control... or if the swarm ever learns to retake what is theirs."

* * *

"Now... do _try _to focus this time," Luxord said, glancing down at the hyperactive little boy fidgeting about in front of him. "I want you to attack me to the best of your ability. I will not strike back, though I will defend myself by blocking your attacks if possible."

Yoshi looked up at him and nodded, looking a bit disinterested. A few seconds passed, and then suddenly he seemed to get an idea; his face broke out into a wide grin, and he let out a battle cry and rushed at the gambler with surprising speed. Just before impact, however, he stopped in mid-run and rapidly flailed his arms in front of the man's chest instead, creating the illusion of many high-speed blows despite the fact that he wasn't actually hitting him at all. Luxord raised an eyebrow, a look of utter confusion coming over his face.

"What in..."

A moment later, the little boy stopped his fake punching and grinned again before explaining himself.

"That's what they do in Dragonball Z!", he blurted out, "Lots 'n' lots of punches!"

Luxord rolled his eyes. He honestly wasn't sure what 'Dragonball Z' was, though he could've sworn he had heard a few of the younger members mention something along those lines before. Yoshi's punches were a good bit faster than he had been expecting, which was a good sign; he wasn't sure if they had any real power behind them or not, since none had actually connected, but if the boy's imitation of this 'Dragonball Z' allowed him to swing so rapidly without tiring himself out, he wasn't going to discourage it.

"Yes, errr... that's not bad, I suppose. If you were to try to actually _hit _with those punches, you'd be doing well."

He motioned for the boy to try again, but instead he began doing a variety of strange hand motions, sometimes appearing as if holding a weapon and other times not. Every time he would finish a series of poses, he would shout out some sort of brief phrase; it was almost as if he were coming up with names for these bizarre "attacks" he was performing, or at least copying them from somewhere like he had done with his "Dragonball Z punches" before.

"Ka... me... ha... me... HA!", he yelled, cupping his hands together at his side and then thrusting them forward. Of course, nothing happened. He then shifted stance and seemed to pretend to hold a sword, moving as if raising the blade up into the air over his head before slashing down.

"Getsuga... Tenshou!"

Finally, he held his hands out in front of him as if holding a large book, then removed one from the imaginary bindings and pointing his hand forward, following it up with a series of crashing and exploding sound effects with his mouth. Though Luxord hadn't recognized any of the boy's other moves, _this _looked oddly familiar.

"Ahem," he said, interrupting Yoshi's sequence of fake attacks, "Are you imitating _Zexion, _by chance?"

The boy nodded rapidly, grinning the whole time.

"Yeah! Zexion's _awesome! _I bet he could beat you any day!"

"Well, actually, we're quite close in power..."

"No way! Zexion's _way _more powerful!"

"Erm, no, _I_ was a tad stronger than him the last time we sparred-_-_"

"He was just holding back on ya, man! Come on, he's stronger than Xaldin, there's no way _you'd _have a chance against him!"

This time, Luxord honestly could not think of a response; his young trainee seemed to have somehow gotten some _very _unusual ideas about how the members of the Organization compared to each other. Xaldin was among the most powerful fighters of the entire Organization, just barely behind Lexaeus in overall ability; only Xemnas could truly claim to be much stronger. Though Zexion was highly intelligent and capable of some amazing things when using his illusion powers to their full potential, he fell far short of nearly every other member when it came to the areas of strength, hand-to-hand combat skill, and endurance. Between him and a powerhouse like Xaldin, there was simply no comparison to be made.

It was then that an idea came to mind-_-_perhaps there was a way to motivate the boy into taking his training seriously. He wasn't sure it would work, but clearly he had to try _something, _and the kid's obsession with Zexion seemed as though it might just be powerful enough for what he had in mind to do the trick.

"So... I suppose you'd like to have a bit of a match with Zexion yourself someday, once you're through with this training and have powers of your own?"

Yoshi's face lit up immediately; Luxord smiled, now knowing for sure that this was going to work.

"I could arrange that," he continued, "Zexion _was _the one who trained me back when I was in your shoes, after all. However... you will need to train very hard before that day. After all, how would you ever hope to stand a chance against him if you can't even pass basic combat training?"

The boy nodded; he seemed to understand the importance of combat training, now that it was twisted a bit into preparation for a friendly sparring match against the Organization member he idolized. Luxord didn't mind, as long as it made things work; he was never one to adhere too strictly to the rules, after all.

"Now, if you're finally ready... it's time to begin your training."

* * *

Later that day, Vexen stepped out of the Dimensional Hippievan and into a long-abandoned old rock quarry surrounded by pine trees, followed shortly afterward by a trio of non-numbered members. Lexaeus has programmed this location into the Hippievan, and as always he had done well-_-_Vexen could have hardly asked for an area more removed from anyone who might see them, or any nearby towns that Fangirls might attack if any should emerge from the portal into the Internet he was about to open.

"Slobodan," he said, turning toward the masked man as he fished the modified phone out of his pocket. "You will remain on the outside and monitor the portal for any Fangirl activity. I have attempted to connect to an area of the Internet without much Fangirl activity, but there's no way I can guarantee that none will appear."

Slobodan nodded, summoning his bow in a flash of yellowish-green and standing back near the Hippievan.

"Banbu and Estera," he said, glancing over to his other side where the remaining two non-numbered members stood, "You will accompany me into the Internet. We will travel in a single-file line whenever possible, I in the front and Estera in the back, with our weapons kept materialized at all times. Understood?"

The two nodded, each of them stretching out one hand and calling forth their weapons. Vexen smiled and turned on Zagan's discarded phone, fiddling around with its settings for a few moments before starting up its web browser. He directed the browser toward the Internet address he had previously decided upon as a fairly Fangirl-safe zone, then pressed an odd combination of buttons that activated the phone's portal-generating function. As the screen began to glow with a strange greenish light, he crouched down and gently placed it on the ground, not wanting it to fall and become damaged again.

As the portal of swirling green light appeared in the air in front of him, Vexen finally summoned his own weapon in a flash of blue light and snow. Then, after glancing back to the non-numbered members behind him one last time, he took his first steps into the Internet.

For a moment, Vexen flinched and closed his eyes; his field of vision had suddenly become filled with a bright light coming from all directions. Moments later, he squinted a bit to see, eventually opening his eyes again as they adjusted to the light. As it turned out, the Internet-_-_or, at least, this sector of it-_-_was flooded with a strange blue light. As he took a few more steps into this unfamiliar territory, Banbu and Estera followed, both flinching at the light much like Vexen had at first but quickly adjusting to it as well.

All three glanced around at the bizarre space around them, just taking in the sights and sounds. They appeared to be standing on something that resembled a blue metal platform, propped up by spiraling pillars that extended down into the depths below before disappearing off into the distance. All around them, translucent numbers and letters floated by, rapidly forming patterns and eventually taking the shape of complete words and sometimes even sentences. They took a few steps forward and immediately became aware that what they were standing on was a round, stadium-like structure; they were standing at one of the highest points of the structure, with several staircases spiraling down around toward the floor in the stadium's center.

"Whoa," Banbu said, the shock finally wearing off enough for him to actually form words. "This is _weird._"

Vexen grinned.

"Indeed," he said, "And this is merely an ordinary auction website, not one of the many Fangirl strongholds... at this point, I can't even begin to imagine what the depths of enemy territory might look like."

The three began to walk down one of the massive, spiraling staircases that wrapped around the inner edge of the stadium-like structure, eventually coming close enough to the bottom that they could see what was there. It appeared that there was nothing there but a vast complex of metal storage containers, with vertically-sliding doors with a long string of code marking the front of each one. Some were plastered with graffiti, posters, and stickers, while others were almost entirely barren; many even appeared to be unused, with their doors hanging open and with no code to identify them. Within a few minutes of walking, Vexen finally reached the bottom of the stairs and walked over to take a look at these unusual structures.

With a slight grunt of effort, he managed to slide open the door to a nearby storage unit, then locked it in the open position and motioned for the other two to follow him inside. As they took their first few steps inside, it immediately became clear that the outside appearance of the rectangular metal rooms did not match what was inside at all-_-_most notably, the inside was much larger, and had several floors rising up above the floor rather than being barely seven feet in height.

"Hmm," Vexen said, glancing around at the racks of miscellaneous objects hanging from the walls, "Yes... it appears that we've found the listings of items for sale on this site."

Banbu reached up and attempted to take a shiny new video game system down from one of the racks, but he found that his hands simply passed through it; Estera glanced over the covers of several old magazines lined up on the opposite side of the room, eventually finding a few that she actually owned. Before long, the three went out of the area where normal items were posted for sale and came upon the _weird _part of the auction site, where sandwiches with vague images of the Virgin Mary burned onto them and sealed bottles of air once breathed by various celebrities could be found. Banbu even spotted a familiar-looking torn T-shirt on the racks, one which looked exactly like the one worn by the boy he and Roxas had saved from the Fangirls during his first ever extermination mission.

"Hey, check this out," he said, getting the attention of Vexen and Estera, "This shirt... it's the one that guy from the convention center had on when he got attacked by Fangirls."

"Hmm... that's odd," Vexen said, "You would think that a victim of Fangirls would want to destroy all evidence of the attack, not... sell it on eBay. Let me take a closer look at that."

The old scientist walked over to where Banbu was standing and took a good look at the tattered shirt, spotting the familiar clawmarks of various Fangirls. There was one bit of damage to the shirt, however, that he did not recognize-_-_one which appeared to have been made with a weapon or some other sharp object, not by any kind of Fangirl claws he had ever seen. Furthermore, this hole went through both sides of the shirt; had the boy been wearing it when that damage had been caused, he certainly would not have survived.

"This boy... he hadn't been _impaled _by anything when you found him back then, had he?"

"No way, he was still standing and everything. He was a little scratched up, but other than that he was fine."

Vexen held one hand to his chin, a worried look forming on his face. Whoever had worn this shirt was surely dead, assuming that the weapon-like damage had been caused while someone was still wearing it; if the shirt's wearer had been murdered, however, it was almost certainly illegal to sell their damaged and bloody clothes over the Internet. The only other possibility he could think of was that the boy had for some reason jabbed his own shirt through with something large and pointy before selling it, though this didn't make much sense either; anyone who knew enough about Fangirls to be interested in buying Fangirl-survivor souvenirs would know that such damage was not caused during the swarm.

"In that case... there's something very suspicious about this shirt," Vexen said, attempting to take a look behind it for any markings that would indicate its seller's identity. "Once we're back on the outside, we should try to track this particular item to its seller and see what we can find out about how they came into possession of it."

* * *

Larxene sat in her hospital bed, staring up at the ceiling out of pure boredom. She had recovered enough that her injuries didn't distract her from the fact that she had nothing else to do, but not quite enough that she would be allowed to leave without sneaking away while Marluxia wasn't looking-_-_always the worst part of any hospital stay. Fortunately, she wasn't alone in the sickbay; though Tundo had been allowed to leave after a night of rest and a checkup, Toivo was still lying in his bed with his wrists wrapped in casts and Roberto was sitting upright in his own bed, his bare chest wrapped in bandages. As usual, Marluxia was also in the room, occasionally checking up on the conditions of his patients but mostly busying himself with other things now that all three were beginning to heal and were no longer in any immediate danger.

For several minutes, she just sat in her bed silently, trying to think of _something _to pass the time. She would likely be there for another week before her stab wounds would be healed well enough for her to go back to active duty, and the fact that she had been mildly poisoned by exposure to D'aal's toxic powers didn't help her rate of healing much. Saix had come by to visit occasionally, but he was usually too busy to stay for long; between his duties as the Organization's medical officer and his training sessions with several non-numbered members, Marluxia tended to be too busy to stop and talk very long as well. Just when she was beginning to get bored again, she noticed the sound of the room's door swinging open and glanced up to see who had come in.

"Kisaki?", she said, slightly surprised at her unexpected appearance. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be off stalking Zexion, or something?"

Apparently not insulted in the least by this comment, the odd girl just smiled and bounced over to one of the empty beds near the one Larxene occupied, sitting down on the edge before replying.

"Well, that's what I was going to, but I can't find him anywhere... I think he's probably busy."

Larxene snickered. He probably _was_ busy... busy hiding from the most recent of the unwanted admirers he had somehow attracted, that is. She chose not to speak her mind this time, however, her boredom and need for _someone _to talk to overpowering her usual snarkiness.

"So what happened?"

For a moment, Larxene wasn't sure what she was talking about; she then glanced down, following the path of Kisaki's eyes, and came to the bandaged-up parts of her own torso, where she had been stabbed through by D'aal's blade.

"Nothing much, just got stabbed again," Larxene said, grinning slightly. "Usually I'm on the other end of that particular injury, but... eh. Should be healed up before too long."

"That must've hurt a lot, huh?"

Larxene snickered again.

"Well, duh. It's not like I just scraped my knee or something," she said. "Still, it's not _that _bad. I mean, it's not like this is the first time I've ever been stabbed or anything."

For a few minutes, the two just sat where they were, Larxene glancing around the room at every tiny thing that happened and Kisaki just staring off into space while swinging her dangling legs back and forth slightly. Eventually, Larxene ended up looking at Kisaki herself, as she hadn't encountered the recent addition to the Organization very many times since she had joined. She noticed that the girl appeared to have silvery-colored eyes, which was strange even in the context of the Organization; though Larxene was far from an expert on the genetics behind eye color, she was fairly sure that particular color wasn't natural. Before she had a chance to ask her if she was wearing some kind of oddly-colored contact lenses, she noticed that the girl had pulled a magazine out of one of her cloak's pockets and had begun reading it.

"Hey," she said, immediately getting an idea on how to fight off the boredom for a while. Kisaki perked up a bit, turning away from her magazine and back toward Larxene. "Do you think you could run down to the library and grab a few things for me to read while I'm in here?"

Kisaki nodded, hiding her magazine away within her cloak once again and quickly hopping down from the edge of the bed. As she left the room and skipped off down the hallway, Larxene grumbled a bit to herself; she hadn't even had time to tell her what sort of books to bring up. Across the room, Roberto laughed slightly, clutching his wounded chest when he realized he couldn't laugh quite as loud as usual without some uncomfortable consequences.

"Well, look at it this way... now, you'll have a surprise to look forward to!"

Larxene rolled her eyes. Judging by Kisaki's behavior around Zexion, she didn't particularly want to see what sort of "surprise" she would have for her; the idea of being buried in a pile of mushy romance novels briefly popped into her head before she forced it to leave. She sighed and laid back down in her bed, returning to staring up at the ceiling and slowly wasting away from boredom. Whatever Kisaki was going to bring her, she could count on one thing-_-_it had to be better than nothing.

* * *

Xemnas sat down at the head of a large table, joined by most of the other numbered members. Roxas was absent, for obvious reasons; Larxene and Marluxia were nowhere to be seen as well, though in Larxene's case at least she had the excuse of being bedridden with injuries. The group waited for several minutes as Vexen passed out copies of his notes from the most recent of his projects, his research into the phone dropped by Zagan which had been modified to open portals directly into the Internet. Just as the old scientist was about to return to his seat, Marluxia entered the room, looking as if he had just ran all the way from his usual post at the sickbay to get there. Vexen handed the pink-haired man the last copy of the notes as he came through the doors, then returned to his own seat.

"Now," Xemnas said, glancing out across the gathered group of the Organization's leaders, "I have called this meeting to inform all of you that Vexen believes he may have a lead on our missing member's whereabouts."

Vexen nodded, then flipped through several pages of his notes and spoke.

"Indeed. As you all know by now, it is strongly suspected that the traitor Zagan was the one responsible for Roxas' kidnapping."

"Right," Zexion said, "He is the only member with powers capable of erasing all energy traces from a room that was unaccounted for during the time Roxas' disappearance must have taken place."

Vexen nodded toward the blue haired man, then flipped to another page of his notes and continued.

"In addition to that suspicion, we now know that Zagan was in possession of a device capable of opening portals into the Internet," he said, producing the shiny black cellphone from his pocket and placing it on the table in front of him. "I have repaired the device and broken down the security precautions that he had programmed into it, and through this I have confirmed that it does indeed make it possible for one to travel into, or even _through, _the Internet... using a method very similar to that of the Fangirls."

Saix frowned at the mention of Zagan's portal-generating phone, remembering how the three traitors had narrowly escaped from him only days before. This thought led him to glance at one of the two empty seats at the table, and he could not help but wonder about Larxene's condition even though he had seen her earlier that day and knew she was recovering without any problems.

"This is all very interesting," Luxord said, stroking his beard, "But, if you don't mind me asking... how, exactly, does this relate to Roxas' location?"

"I was just getting to that," Vexen said, flipping to the last pages of his report. "But since you asked, I will get right to the point... it is my current theory that Roxas is being held not in this world, but somewhere within the Internet itself."

The room was filled with murmuring; some members seemed to have difficulty believing that the kidnapped boy had somehow been _inside _the Internet for almost two weeks.

"That would explain why the Fangirl Detection System couldn't find him," Lexaeus said, frowning. "But the Internet is a vast, unexplored frontier... even if Roxas _is _there, how would we go about finding him?"

Vexen's face broke into a wide grin.

"Fortunately, we may not have to do much searching at all," he said, flipping to the last page of his report. "The data in Zagan's phone was all completely intact... so I have a complete record of every point within the Internet that he has _ever _transported himself into."

He held up his notes and pointed at a diagram on the final page, which showed a chart representing the expanse of the Internet with several dots indicating that Zagan had entered from that point sometime in the past. The rest of the members at the table immediately flipped to that very same page in their copies of the notes, looking over every last detail of the diagram.

"Huh," Demyx said, scratching his head slightly and then pointing to the very center of the diagram. "Looks like almost all of 'em are in a big circle right around... here."

"If I have interpreted this diagram correctly," Xemnas said, staring down at the diagram in front of him, "Zagan's entry points are located in a circle around... the exact center point of the entire Internet."

"That is correct," Vexen said, "Though I have no way of knowing what lies within the center of the Internet, it does appear that, with a few exceptions, Zagan's entries were all near that very point."

Zexion pored over the notes for a few seconds, then looked up suddenly.

"It's this one," he said, pointing out an entry coordinate that was slightly further outside the circle than most, "According to the notes at the bottom... this entry point was the one he used on the night Roxas disappeared."

Vexen nodded.

"Yes... for all the planning and covering his tracks that Zagan did, he clearly underestimated us if he thought that we would not be able to access this data. He's unknowingly given us a trail directly toward the place where Roxas is likely held captive."

"Maybe," Axel said, "But you never know. This could all be part of his plan, too... who knows how far he went from that point before dropping Roxas off."

"True... it's unlikely that he transported himself directly into Number Thirteen's place of captivity," Vexen said. "But the location of his entry has not been altered in any way, so it most certainly _is _the place where he entered the Internet after abducting the boy."

"Assuming my powers work properly within the Internet," Zexion said, "I should have little difficulty tracing Zagan and Roxas' path once inside."

"If Zagan hasn't covered his tracks on the other side too, that is," Axel added.

Vexen scoffed.

"He did not even take the simple precaution of deleting his phone's history, Axel. It's clear to me that Zagan never expected us to follow him into the Internet... I would be quite surprised to learn that the fool even bothered to remove the residual traces of his power once he was safely inside."

"I guess we'll find out for sure when we get there," Marluxia said, shrugging slightly. "We _are _here to plan a rescue mission, correct?"

Xemnas nodded.

"Indeed. All that remains now... is to decide exactly who to send into the depths of the Internet to retrieve Roxas."


	23. Mark of Mastery

**CHAPTER 22**  
_~ Mark of Mastery ~_

On an empty beach on a small island off the coast of Japan, a boy with brown, spiky hair lay unconscious in the wet sand, occasionally twitching slightly but otherwise showing no sign of awakening. The boy's mind, however, was going into overdrive, his memories flashing before him in the form of disjointed, chaotic dreams.

A younger version of the boy sat at the edge of that very same beach along with two others, a taller silver-haired boy and a cute redhead who stood over him with her hands on her hips, seeming to have just discovered him taking a nap when he was supposed to be doing something else.

_"It's just... I've been having weird thoughts lately,"_ a memory of the boy's younger self said, _"Like, is any of this for real, or not?"_

The peaceful scene of the boy and his friends instantly vanished, replaced by memories of his hometown being attacked by a horde of Fangirls while stormclouds gathered in the sky above. He flailed at one of the creatures with a wooden toy sword, but was unable to cause any noticeable damage.

_"Wha... what are these things?"_

He saw himself rushing to the docks nearby, noticing briefly that one of his friends' boats was already missing but not thinking about it much before hopping into his own and furiously rowing away as the groping claws of the Fangirls stretched out after him from the shore. The next thing he knew, there was a flash of lightning in the sky above and something struck him from behind. He was floating down into the depths, barely conscious, drifting off on the ocean tide, and then... everything went black.

Slowly, the blackness shrunk away until only the darkened silhouette of a tall man remained, the rest replaced by blinding white light. The shadowy image of the man stepped forward, his features becoming clearer; he wore reflective sunglasses and had a short beard on his chin, which he stroked as he stood over the boy with a suspicious smirk on his face.

"Who... who are you?"

"Well, that's the question, isn't it?", Zagan said, looking down at the barely-conscious young boy in front of him as the surf splashed up against the edges of his boots. "You can call me Zagan. What about you? Do you remember your name?"

The boy sat up slightly, staring at the unfamiliar man. Well, mostly-unfamiliar, anyway; he had seen the man in his memories, though only briefly before consciousness began to come back to him. He thought about his question, then attempted to form words, though it seemed he was having a great deal of difficulty.

"A... Ar... ah..."

"Ah? I think you've got things a bit backwards," Zagan said, crouching down and clutching the heavy crown-shaped necklace that hung from the boy's neck. "It looks to me like it's carved into the back of this thing you've got here. See?"

"Kara... no," the boy said, slowly reading aloud the Japanese characters engraved on the back of the crown pendant. "Karano... Sora."

"That's better," Zagan said, patting him on the shoulder. "Now, Sora... tell me how you ended up lying here on an abandoned beach like that. You do know there's no populated areas within a mile of here, right?"

There was a brief pause as Zagan stood back up, walking out of the now-rising tide and standing alongside the patch of sand where Sora was sitting. He then looked as though he had suddenly remembered something, and added one more thing.

"Well... not _anymore, _anyway."

Immediately, Sora's mind swam with images of the Fangirl swarm, and he clutched his head in pain, nearly doubling over into the fetal position from the shock that the sudden return of these terrifying memories caused. A few minutes passed, and the boy finally managed to shake off his fear, standing up shakily and breathing heavily.

"The... those _things,_" he said, shivering slightly. "There were those things, with weird symbols instead of faces... dozens of them, and then I tried to get away, but..."

Zagan laughed slightly.

"The important thing is," he said, patting him on the shoulder again, "That you survived all that. Isn't that right... Sora?"

* * *

Riku stood alongside Terra, Aqua, Ven, and the still-bandaged Ignis before a large door that resembled the sort of thing you would find protecting a bank vault, watching as Ansem carefully turned the various combination locks to the correct positions before yanking on the main wheel that opened the whole thing. With great effort, the old man was finally able to get the heavy door to move, and he stepped aside as it swung open.

"In here," he said, briefly pausing to catch his breath, "Is a room outfitted with advanced holographic projection technology... a combat simulation room, you could say. It is in this place where your Mark of Mastery exam will be held."

Riku nodded, unclipping his Keyblade and activating both it and his armor with one swift motion. Just when he was about to step forward and enter the room where his skills would be pushed to their limits, the door behind him swung open and two sets of footsteps caused everyone to turn around suddenly, confused by this unexpected interruption.

"Zagan?", Ansem asked, turning toward the taller of the two newcomers. "What are you doing here? Only the current Keyblade Masters are permitted to watch the Mark of Mastery exam."

"Well," Zagan began, adjusting his glasses slightly as he always seemed to do. "All I did was mention Riku's test to this kid here, and he goes charging off to find you guys before it starts. I dunno for sure, but I think he wants to try it out, too."

Ansem's jaw dropped, the old man briefly becoming completely lost for words. The Mark of Mastery exam was intended for those with a great deal of experience wielding the Keyblade and fighting Fangirls, to determine if they were fit to receive the power and responsibility of a Keyblade Master. Each of the current Keyblade Masters took at least a year of training to qualify; to allow a first-day recruit to even make an attempt was unheard of. Even worse, it was unlikely that Sora had already recovered from the dazed and partially-amnesiac state Zagan had found him in; letting him undertake an ordeal meant for only the most experienced among the Keybearers could prove disastrous for his health.

"Well.. I don't believe there's any precedent for such a thing," Ansem began, pausing a bit and staring down at the boy with the spiky brown hair. As he looked, the strangest thought popped into his head-_-_the thought that maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea to let young Sora take the test after all.

Zagan glanced down to Sora and then back to Ansem, then asked for his final answer.

"Well? Couldn't hurt to at least let him try, right?"

Ansem sighed, but then nodded slightly. It seemed that every time he looked at the boy, his opinion of him grew; perhaps, he thought, allowing him to take the Mark of Mastery test alongside Riku now would give him a preview of just what would be expected of him later, when he was truly ready to attempt it alone.

"Yes... I will allow it, just this once," he said. "Sora Karano... activate your armor and Keyblade, and take your place beside Riku in preparation for your Mark of Mastery exam."

The boy flashed a toothy grin and then immediately covered it up as the helmet of his armor appeared along with the rest of the suit, almost instantly flashing to full size from its usual miniaturized state. A moment later, he had assembled his Keyblade as well, and with a few quick steps he had joined Riku, turning and nodding to him before staring forward through the massive door.

"Well, I guess my work here is done," Zagan said, smiling slightly as he ducked back out through the still-open door. "Can't be peeking in on that Mark of Mastery thing, after all. Plus, I'm supposed to be working on building that shiny new Fangirl Detection System we're installing... might take a while to gather up all those parts."

Ansem nodded, watching as Zagan disappeared into the hallway before turning back toward the four Keyblade Masters standing behind him. They were now the only others remaining in the room, as Sora and Riku had passed through the vault door and were currently exploring the currently-empty room, waiting for their Mark of Mastery exam to begin.

"The four of you," he said, "Please watch over Sora and Riku during their trials inside that room. If at any point it seems that things are getting out of hand for Sora... I would like you to go in after them and remove him immediately."

Terra nodded.

"No problem," he said. "What about Riku?"

"Allow him to continue the exam if at all possible," Ansem said, rubbing his forehead slightly as if he was beginning to get a bit of a headache. "Even if it is necessary for you to retrieve Sora. Try to keep your interruption of his trial to a minimum, if it comes to that."

As Ansem left the room as well, the four remaining Keybearers slowly pushed the giant metal door shut and then moved over to a set of computer screens embedded in the wall nearby; it was through these that they would be able to observe Sora and Riku. Ignis shook his head slightly, watching as the younger of the two boys fooled around in the room while he waited for the test to begin, posing with his Keyblade like a child playing with a toy.

"I don't know what it is about that kid," he said, turning away from the screen. "Master Ansem must see some serious potential in him, to let a new recruit with less than a day's experience in there without a fight..."

Aqua frowned slightly, glancing back and forth between the screen and her companions and beginning to wonder if Ansem had gone mad.

"Something's not right about this," she said, "I don't know _what_... but something definitely seems off."

Terra shrugged.

"He's getting old," he said. "Maybe he's just trying to build up a new generation of Keyblade Masters now so there'll be plenty of us to pick up where he left off when he's gone."

"Maybe that's all there is to it... I don't know," she sighed. "Everything seemed fine just a few minutes ago, but now... I just can't help but feel like something strange is going on here."

* * *

Riku laughed a bit as Sora struck a pose, propping his Keyblade on his armored shoulder. He somehow knew that, if his face had not been obscured by his helmet's visor, he would be flashing that familiar cheesy smile. Everything about Sora seemed so familiar, as if the two had known each other all their lives, and yet... Riku was sure that their first meeting was just hours ago, when Zagan had suddenly arrived at the Keybearers' headquarters with him. Strangest of all, this feeling of familiarity seemed to be mutual-_-_Sora had even addressed Riku by name before he even had a chance to introduce himself. Could it be that Sora was, in fact, someone from his past that he had forgotten as the years went by?

Before he could think of the possibility any more, the room suddenly went dark, signifying that the Mark of Mastery exam was about to begin. All around them, pieces of unfamiliar landscapes began to form where previously there had only been blank walls and then total blackness; both boys braced themselves, shifting their feet into their respective combat stances and readying their Keyblades for whatever the room's programming might throw at them.

"Well, this is it," Riku said, glancing over to Sora. "No way to know what we're up against in here... be careful."

Sora nodded, then took off running toward a section of the room that had shifted to resemble a beach dotted with palm trees. Riku held back a groan, then hesitantly followed him, watching all around for illusory Fangirls or some other threat to emerge at every turn.

"Hey, check this out!", Sora yelled, stopping at a large tree that had bent over in an odd way that would have made it possible for several people to sit on its trunk at once. "Reminds me of home..."

"Yeah," Riku said, smiling slightly behind his visor. "Weird how this would show up in here... we had a tree just like this back where I'm from."

Sora turned toward him and laughed.

"Where _you're _from? Did you forget something, Riku?"

Before Riku could ask the younger boy what he meant by that comment, the two were thrown to the ground by the shockwave of a sudden explosion. Sora rolled and hopped back to his feet, seeming to draw on some instinctive knowledge of fighting despite the fact that he had no previous experience; Riku pulled himself to his feet a split-second later, readying his Keyblade and turning in the direction of the explosion's source to see what had happened. Standing ankle-deep in the surf was what appeared for all the world to be Terra, clad in full armor, with his Keyblade glowing with an aura of pale green energy that resembled the flash of a dying Fangirl. Riku gasped, briefly lowering his guard.

"Terra! What are you doing in-_-_"

Before he could finish his sentence, the armored figure raised his Keyblade and transformed it into a blade-edged whip-like weapon, lashing out with it and narrowly missing Riku's right arm as he dove to the ground. Sora charged forward and slammed his Keyblade into the phantom Terra's upper chest with all the strength he could muster, but this only caused him to stagger back a bit before knocking the boy aside with a backhanded swipe from his gauntlet-covered arm. Riku quickly realized what was going on-_-_the door had not opened since the exam had begun, so this was not Terra at all, only one of the room's illusions. He then followed Sora's lead, rushing at his armored opponent at full speed in hopes of getting in close before his Keyblade was able to return to its usual shape. Unfortunately, he was not quite fast enough, and his slash ended up being blocked at the last moment by the glowing imitation of Terra's heavy weapon.

Both boys doubled back and readied their Keyblades, waiting for their opponent to make another move before attacking. When the illusion of Terra shifted his Keyblade into the shape of a massive shoulder-mounted cannon and began to charge a sphere of energy within its barrel, they rushed at him, catching him off-guard with a series of rapid strikes. When his Keyblade began to shift back to its usual close-combat shape, Riku smashed his own weapon into his wrist, causing him to lose his grip and sending the Keyblade falling into the ocean with a splash. Sora leaped high into the air and prepared to slam his own Keyblade down into the armored warrior's skull, but just like before he was knocked aside by a well-aimed punch, falling into the water as well.

"Quick," Riku said, "While he's unarmed... we can probably handle this guy if we can make sure he doesn't pick up that Keyblade."

* * *

"Ouch," Terra said, briefly clutching his wrist as he watched Riku land a heavy blow on the same part of the armored duplicate on the screen. "As much as I miss the way Eraqus used to do this back in the day... I'm glad that's not really me in there."

Ven laughed slightly.

"Yeah, me too," he said. "If it _was _you in there, it wouldn't be fair for those two."

"Hey, I could always hold back," Terra said, smiling slightly.

The four watched as Sora jumped high above the false Terra's head and attempted to vertically plunge his Keyblade down into the top of his helmet.

"Nice move," Aqua said. "Well... it would've been if it worked."

"Still," Ignis added, "The kid's not bad at all for a first-day recruit. He's got to have some kinda previous fighting experience... if this was really his first time, there'd be no way he'd be pulling off stuff like that."

The others nodded; Sora did indeed seem to be impressive considering that, before today, he had most likely never even _seen _a Keyblade. Whether this was just natural fighting skill or the result of some past experience was hard to say at this point, but he was certainly doing better than any of them would expect from one of the dozens of rank-and-file soldiers that they worked alongside.

Terra flinched once again as Sora finally managed to get a solid hit in, smashing his Keyblade through the visor of the phantom's helmet and revealing that (thankfully) there was not actually a simulation of his face on the other side. Ignis snickered a bit at his reaction, which earned him a light shove from Aqua.

"Wow... he must be pretty strong for a fifteen-year-old," Ven said. "Even considering the boost he's getting from the Keyblade."

"Yeah... it takes a lot of power to smash through this armor in one shot like that," Terra said, nodding. "Even if it is just the visor."

The Elementals continued to watch as the two boys inside the room rained down a series of blows onto the empty armor, battering it from all directions faster than it could react. Though occasionally one or both of them would have one of their strikes blocked or be shoved out of the way, with the two of them working together they were able to prevent their opponent from retrieving his fallen weapon, and before long the simulation program decided to move on to something else. The simulacrum of Terra's armor fell to pieces and was washed away by the tide along with its Keyblade, and then the giggles of Fangirls began to echo from all directions.

"Looks like things are about to get tougher in there," Aqua said. "Let's see how these two do against a swarm."

* * *

As the creepy giggles and meaningless chatter of Fangirls began to echo from all around the two boys, Riku readied his Keyblade and looked around, trying to figure out where they were coming from. Their surroundings shifted once again, the familiar beach where they had been standing vanishing and giving way to the image of a city street dotted with tall buildings and run-down old warehouses. The silver-haired boy glanced over to Sora, noticing that he seemed to be shivering; he looked back to the street in front of him and quickly found out why-_-_a horde of Fangirls of all types was approaching in the distance.

"There's a ton of 'em," he said, squinting in an attempt to get a better look at exactly what kinds of Fangirls they would be facing. "We're gonna have to work together to handle a swarm that big..."

Sora briefly managed to shake off his fear and nodded, readying his Keyblade as the creatures continued their slow but steady approach. This was only the second time he had ever seen Fangirls, and no matter how hard he tried, he couldn't force the memories of the swarm that had attacked his home out of his head; every giggle reminded him of it. Eventually, he couldn't take it anymore-_-_but this time, his reaction was not fear but violent, unstoppable rage.

"Whoa! Hold on!"

Riku tried to stop him, but Sora didn't listen-_-_with his Keyblade held ready to strike, he went charging headlong into the Fangirl horde, hacking away at any of the creatures he could reach. Within a matter of seconds, he had mowed down dozens of Glompers and Nooblets, clearing a path into the middle of the swarm where he began to smack around several Flamers so quickly that they didn't have a chance to charge up fireballs to throw at him. After watching for a few seconds, Riku figured that his companion was going to be okay and decided to rush in for his own attack, concentrating on the outer edges of the swarm rather than charging into the middle like Sora had done. He rushed in and split a Glomper in half with a single strike, then proceeded to wipe out wave after wave of other Fangirls as they moved in to replace the front lines that he had just destroyed.

In a few minutes, the swarm was all but gone, and the two boys stood in the middle of the street, soaked in sweat and breathing heavily.

"Man," Riku said, removing his helmet for a moment to wipe the sweat off of his face, "This would be a whole lot easier if we could transform our Keyblades like the others..."

"Transform them?", Sora asked, "Uh... how's that work?"

"Like what that thing that looked like Terra did," Riku explained. "You know, when he turned his Keyblade into that whip-like thing, and then into a cannon. Wiping out Fangirls would go a lot faster if we had Keyblades that could do that kind of stuff."

Sora nodded. Before either of the two could say anything else, however, another wave of Fangirls appeared, crashing through the windows of a nearby electronics store. While the previous swarm had been made up mostly of low-level Fangirls like Glompers, the ones that faced them now were far more dangerous-_-_some of them were types that Riku had never actually seen up close, only recognizing them from pictures in Ansem's research notes on the creatures. One had strange, spiked-up hair and a dazed look on its face; Riku immediately identified it as a Cracky Fangirl. Another waved around a flag, which on closer inspection was emblazoned with the letters "SxR." The rest seemed to be mostly Squealers and Flamers, each of which began to charge up its attacks before either of the two boys could make a move.

"Look out!"

Sora rolled out of the way, narrowly avoiding three explosions of fire from the Flamers; unfortunately, this put him right in the past of the Squealers' sonic blast, which sent him flying back across the street and landing flat on his back. Riku charged forward toward the Squealers, hoping to catch them off guard before they were able to charge up another blast, but he wasn't quite fast enough; before long, he too was sent flying back, though he managed to force himself to a stop by jabbing his Keyblade into the pavement below him and grinding to a halt.

The Cracky Fangirl raised its hand in his direction, but before it could do anything, Riku pulled his Keyblade out from the ground and delivered a jump-kick to its midsection, knocking it off balance and sending it toppling to the ground. He followed up with a series of Keyblade strikes to its head, causing it to glow green and shatter; he turned and was about to take off after the Squealers again, but before he could take three steps in their direction, he was suddenly hit by a wave of purplish energy from behind. He turned his head slightly, noticing that the source of the attack had been the Yaoinator; it had apparently ducked into a nearby alley while he had been focusing on the Cracky Fangirl, only emerging when it had a chance for a sneak-attack.

Before he was able to lunge after it and counterattack, however, something strange happened. He froze in place for a moment, then slowly turned his head back toward Sora, who was currently charging at the Flamers and Squealers again after another failed attempt that had left the outer layers of his armor lightly burned from the impact of several fireballs. Riku found himself staring at the spiky-haired boy, unable to think of anything else; he knew he must have fallen under the Fangirl's influence, and yet he could do nothing to stop it. It was as if he was trapped helplessly inside his own body as it moved on its own, only able to watch as he walked over toward Sora.

Before the Yaoinator's influence could cause anything non-consensual to happen, however, Sora was sent flying by another blast of sound from the Squealers, and Riku was knocked to the ground by the armored fifteen-year-old crashing into him at full force. Sora immediately jumped up off of Riku, turning his head toward him for a second to see if he was okay, and then charged back toward the Squealers and drove his Keyblade through the skull of the nearest one, destroying it instantly. Riku pulled himself back to his feet, shaking his head a few times; though he still felt a bit woozy, he could immediately tell that he was no longer under the power of the Yaoinator.

"Okay," he said, turning toward the flag-waving Fangirl and readying his Keyblade. "That is _not _going to happen again."

The Fangirl spun its flag and launched another purple wave in his direction, but he zig-zagged past it in his charge toward the creature, swinging his Keyblade at its side as he finally reached it. The Yaoinator was knocked to the ground but quickly caught itself using the pole of its flag for support, standing back up and then swinging it at Riku. He deflected several flag-swinging attacks with his Keyblade, then ducked under an especially high swing and lunged at the Fangirl while it wasn't ready, thrusting his Keyblade into its stomach and driving it back into a large mailbox at the corner of the street. The Fangirl squirmed a bit, and then Riku jabbed his weapon into it even harder, causing it to shatter into a flash of green and a swirl of computer code (and also leaving a sizable dent in the mailbox behind it.)

Not long afterward, Sora finished off the remaining Squealer and Flamer Fangirls, and the two boys stood in the middle of the street with their Keyblades raised in front of them, knowing that it wouldn't be long before their next obstacle emerged.

"So, whaddya think it'll be next?", Sora asked, removing his helmet and taking a glance over at Riku. The older of the two boys did the same, glad to finally have a chance to remove the most annoying piece of his armor.

"No idea," Riku replied, sitting down on the curb and stretching. "My first guess would be some kind of super-powerful Fangirl, but at this point I'm not sure what to expect."

After a few more minutes of waiting, the two finally got their answer-_-_the ground below them suddenly shook, and slowly the street began to split apart, forming a deep chasm with no bottom as far as they could see. Sora was stuck on one side of the divide, while the spot where Riku had been sitting was right on the edge of the other half. Before long, the two were separated by a twenty-foot gap, and it was growing wider by the second.

"Riku!"

The silver-haired boy just waved as Sora disappeared into the distance. This was only a test, after all-_-_they would be reunited once again as soon as it was over. He did take a few steps away from the edge of the chasm, though; even in a simulator, standing right on the edge of a bottomless pit couldn't possibly be a good idea.

* * *

On the other side of the chasm, Sora was starting to panic. Riku had disappeared after the dividing land split them apart, and he had not heard a word from him since then; on top of that, the cityscape around him had started to shift in a strange way, transforming into a strange jumble of different types of terrain seemingly placed at random. There were trees growing directly out of water, but with chunks inexplicably missing from their branches; in some places, one type of tree had branches from a completely different type growing out of it. Desert sand gave way to swampy pools, and just feet away from both of them were small fields covered in snow.

"Riku! Can you still hear me over there?"

He waited, but there was no response; only absolute silence. He turned away from the chasm and found that an ancient church exactly like the one that hid the Keybearers' headquarters had suddenly and inexplicably appeared there, displacing some of the warped terrain; a few of the distorted trees now appeared to be growing _through _the building's walls, while others just seemed to cut off suddenly as they touched the stonework along the outside.

"Well," he said to himself, putting his helmet back on as he took a few steps toward the building, "I guess there's nowhere else to go now."

He walked up the stone steps leading up to the door, reaching up and grabbing the handle with one armored hand but finding that it appeared to be stuck. Yanking on it a bit more, he realized that it wasn't just stuck-_-_the door was _locked. _How did they expect him to open a locked door? Unless the key was hidden somewhere else in the room, or something, he couldn't really figure out how this was supposed to work.

After a few moments of looking around, it became clear that there was no key inexplicably hidden in the grass, up the distorted trees, or at the bottom of the pits of stagnant water. At that moment, he glanced down at the weapon in his hand, and it finally hit him.

"A key... _Key_blade," he mumbled. "So maybe..."

He walked back to the door and held the weapon out in front of him, pointing the key-like pronged end toward the door's keyhole. After a few moments of waiting, nothing happened, so he took a closer look at the weapon itself, finding several buttons built into the handle in places where his hands usually wouldn't touch.

"Huh," he said, noticing them for the first time. "I wonder what these do?"

He pushed one, and heard a bit of radio static. Probably not that one; if it sounded like a walkie-talkie, that's probably what it was for. He tried another, but found that it was not actually a functioning button at all. He recognized the largest of the four buttons as the same one he had used to activate the weapon in the first place, and he avoiding pressing it, suspecting that it would only make the weapon revert to its original state (nothing more than a handle) once again. Finally, he pushed the last of the buttons and held the Keyblade up against the door again. There was a strange mechanical humming from inside the weapon's shaft, and then, moments later, a click from inside the door.

"It really worked!", he suddenly blurted out, his excitement getting the best of his worries over Riku's sudden disappearance for a moment. Immediately, he yanked the doors open and headed inside, but before he could get to the far end of the room, he was stopped by what appeared to be an invisible wall in front of him.

"Huh? What's going on?"

There was a brief pause, followed by a mechanical shifting sound from somewhere below the floor. The podium slid out of the way and revealed the stone staircase beneath it, and almost immediately another armored figure emerged from below, wielding an unfamiliar Keyblade that almost seemed to be shaped like the letter E. He wondered if this warrior would have been familiar to Riku; he certainly seemed to recognize the first of the armored phantoms as Terra, after all.

Sora braced himself for an attack, but instead the armored figure simply held out his Keyblade, waving it through the air slightly and then pressing a button somewhere on the handle. Several tiny specks of shiny metal emerged from somewhere within the Keyblade's structure, floating around the room in formation for several seconds before suddenly enlarging to the size of beach balls. The floating metal orbs began to glow with a bright light, illuminating the dark church and casting strange shadows all across it as they continued to float about in concentric circles around Sora. He just watched, almost hypnotized by the show of flickering lights and hovering orbs; he barely noticed that they were starting to move in closer to him before it was too late.

"Waaaagh!"

Sora screamed as a powerful beam of concentrated light suddenly erupted from one of the orbs, slicing through the armor on his shoulder and leaving a painful burn behind. He managed to deflect several more of these beams with his Keyblade after standing back up from the first, but before long it became clear that he couldn't keep up with them this way; he had to take out at least some of the orbs, or he feared he wouldn't make it out alive.

* * *

"Look familiar?", Aqua said, smiling and turning toward Terra.

"Heh... yeah," he said, remembering back to the day when he first attempted the Mark of Mastery exam. "Looks like Ansem programmed Eraqus' old training method into this thing after all."

Ven just watched as Sora and Riku each fought their own holographic copy of Eraqus' metal orbs, which had become one of his signature moves back in the days before he had retired from the ranks of the Keybearers. They were, in fact, capable of far more than what they were subjecting the boys to at the moment, but after all this was only a test-_-_nobody expected an inexperienced Keybearer like Riku, with only a little over a year of training, to have to stand up to the full extent of what a true Keyblade Master was capable of.

"Sora's starting to lag behind a bit," Ignis said, watching as the boy managed to split one of the metal orbs in two only to be zapped by beams of light from three others. "I'm guessing we'll need to go in and bail him out before too much longer."

"Give the kid a chance," Terra said, "He's not doing _that _bad, all things considered."

Just as Terra spoke, Sora managed to destroy two more of the floating orbs, making it far less difficult for him to evade those that remained. A near-miss from his Keyblade damaged one of the orbs without completely disabiling it, and it went out of control, firing lasers of varying strengths all across the room; fortunately for Sora, they were not aimed in his direction, and several of them even struck the other orbs, not cutting through them but still knocking them around enough that they were unable to lock on to his position. He jumped up onto one of the orbs that had began to hover low to the ground, riding it around the room, then took a flying leap off of it and onto another one that passed by, thrusting his Keyblade down into it as he landed and instantly crushing through its layer of armor. The orb lost its power to remain airborne and dropped to the floor like the heavy ball of metal it was, causing Sora to lose his balance and topple over backward as his ride slammed into the stone below.

"That looked a little painful," Ven said. "I mean, not as bad as those lasers, but..."

Aqua turned away from Sora's screen for a moment to take a look at how Riku was doing, finding that he had already reduced the roomful of hovering, laser-blasting orbs to little more than a scattered pile of scrap metal.

"Wow," she said, stepping back a bit in shock. "Done _already?_"

Ignis snickered.

"Hey, why so surprised?", he said, grinning. "You remember who trained 'im, don't ya?"

"I think that might be _why_ she's so surprised," Terra said, laughing slightly. Ignis frowned a bit in response, but chose to say nothing; even he wouldn't pick a fight over something so minor, at least not when he knew he would be outmatched.

* * *

Riku paused, taking his helmet off once again and breathing deeply. At the other side of the room, the armored figure he did not recognize simply nodded in his direction and reverted his Keyblade to the form of its handle, clipping it to his belt and heading back down the staircase; just like the illusion of Terra that had appeared before, this armored figure was completely silent. The podium slid back into position as he vanished from sight, and once again Riku was alone in the room. Even the shattered remains of the metal orbs had vanished, presumably being taken into the mystery Keybearer's weapon once again when it had been deactivated.

Several minutes passed in complete silence, and eventually Riku decided to sit down on one of the long-abandoned church pews for a brief rest before the next part of the test began. He had no idea how much more was left before he learned whether he had qualified as a Keyblade Master or not; presumably, this was to prepare him for situations where he would be forced to fight for long periods of time without any breaks, not knowing when the next enemy would arrive or where they would come from.

He sighed and brushed some sweat-soaked hair away from his face, briefly wondering if he should get it cut sometime soon; maybe that way his helmet wouldn't be so uncomfortable, especially in warmer weather. His thoughts then turned back to Sora, that mysterious boy who seemed to somehow be both familiar and completely unknown at the same time. Had he really lived back on Innenjima sometime, years ago, before the town they had grown up in was laid to waste by the Fangirls? Somehow, Riku couldn't remember for sure. He thought back to his childhood, but the name "Sora" somehow didn't ring any bells. The only other kids he knew very well had been Kairi, Ventus, his near-identical little brother Aros...

_Aros._ Immediately, Riku noticed something about the name "Sora" that he had not previously realized-_-_if it was spelled the way he thought it was, it was "Aros" written backwards. He knew that Sora was partially amnesiac, according to what Zagan had said; could it be that this familiar yet unfamiliar boy was actually his old friend, for some reason going by another name? Sora's hair was a bit too dark and a bit too brown to be an exact match, but there was always the possibility that he had dyed it at some point.

It was then that he remembered he and Ignis' conflict with Organization XIII the day before, and what that strange old man had said just before leaving-_-_that he was not the only one to survive the Fangirl swarm that destroyed his home. Was Aros-_-_or Sora-_-_the one that Vexen had been talking about then? Had he not died in the Fangirl swarm after all, but instead somehow escaped, living in some distant land with an assumed name and an altered appearance?

"Aros... or Sora... whatever your name is," he mumbled to himself. "I'm gonna have a lot of questions for you when this is over... let's hope you can remember enough to answer them."

"Why wait until then?"

Riku suddenly stood up as the voice came from somewhere behind him, sounding much like Sora but at the same time somehow... _not._ He turned around, not bothering to put his helmet back on, and came face to face with someone who very much appeared to be the same spiky-haired boy that he had entered the vault with-_-_but, just like his voice, something about him seemed off. After taking a look at his face, he immediately recognized what it was: his eyes. Sora's eyes were not their usual blue, but an almost glowing yellow-orange; on top of that, they no longer had any pupils.

"You... you're not Sora," Riku muttered, doing a double backflip to clear the church pews and then readying his Keyblade. "What are you?"

"Oh, but I _am _Sora," the glowing-eyed boy said, raising his own Keyblade into an imitation of the boy's stance. "Or would you rather I be... you?"

With those words, he shifted his position once again, duplicating Riku's stance perfectly. Before anyone could say another word, the warped imitation of Sora charged forward, laying into Riku with the very same opening swing that Riku himself always used. He blocked with his own Keyblade, but the force of the attack pushed him back anyway; now he _knew _this couldn't be Sora. There was no way that the kid had this kind of power behind him, or at least if he did he wasn't showing it before.

"I get it now," Riku said, shifting his own stance to something slightly different than usual in hopes of throwing off the false Sora that was fighting like him. "You're just another figment of this room... just another test for me. Right?"

The boy who claimed to be Sora laughed maniacally, choosing not to answer and simply charging forward with a series of crushing blows that Riku had difficulty defending against. Changing his own stance clearly wasn't working; if anything, it was just making it harder for him to keep up, as the altered motions were not quite what his muscles and reflexes were used to. He abruptly went back to his usual fighting style, blocking one of Sora's blows with his Keyblade and then hopping backward for just a moment before countering with a powerful forward slash. This threw off his opponent, who lunged right into the attack and was sent smashing down to the floor, light cracks forming in the armor that covered his chest.

"Now... time to get this over with."

* * *

"Ooh," Aqua said, shuddering slightly, "That's pretty creepy."

"Yeah," Ignis said, grinning. "The eyes are a nice touch, huh?"

"Looks like Ansem's really outdone himself with this year's exam," Ven added. "Where'd he get the idea for those eyes, anyway?"

"Xehanort, I think," Terra said, "You know... one of those guys he used to work with. Though I'm pretty sure _he _at least had pupils."

The four Keybearers on the outside watched as Riku's fight against the false Sora continued, with the two of them finally getting serious about their battle. The computer's simulation of Sora was no longer copying Riku's fighting style, instead using what more closely resembled Sora's but with a few elements of various other Keybearers mixed in; Riku was still fighting about evenly with him, but he was having a harder time predicting the illusion's moves now that they weren't identical to his own.

"Looks like we've got ourselves a winner," Ignis said. "Got to wonder how the other kid's doing, though. You think he could handle something like this?"

One look at the monitor displaying Sora's version of this final test made it clear that the answer was "no." He was screaming at the top of his lungs while struggling to block the simulated Riku's attacks, apparently attempting to snap his friend out of whatever had come over him; he had not realized that what he was fighting was not the real Riku at all. Aqua's eyes widened at the sight; this was _not _good. If things didn't turn around before long, they would have to stop Sora's exam and go in after him; even if he managed to fight his way through the last part of the test after all, his mental state clearly wasn't what was expected of a Keyblade Master at this point.

"Damn it," Terra cursed, earning him a brief look of disapproval from Aqua (though, due to the situation at hand, she let it pass without a word this time.) "I knew we shouldn't have let Zagan throw him in there so soon... who knows what kind of stuff that kid's been through before today."

"He's getting worse," Aqua said, frowning and gripping her Keyblade's handle. "I... I think I'm going to go in after him."

"Alone? That room's not going to ignore you just because you're not the one on trial," Ignis said, turning toward her for a moment. "You'll have fake Fangirls all over you in an instant."

"Then let's _all _go in," Ven said. "Before it's too late."

Ignis shrugged, then unclipped his Keyblade and activated it, causing its components to assemble in a flash of rapidly-enlarging machinery. Aqua and Ven did the same, while Terra yanked the vault door open with a single sharp tug on the wheel that opened it, activating his own Keyblade once it was wide open and following the other three inside.

* * *

"Riku... no... wh-what have they done to you?"

Sora was now in a state of hysteria, screaming the same things over and over and barely holding back tears as he shakily blocked the false Riku's blows with his own Keyblade. Eventually, he could take no more and lashed out, but his unfocused attack was easily avoided by his opponent, who rushed forward and countered with a powerful slash of his own that slammed Sora to the floor.

"I... I don't want to hurt you," he said, standing back up using his Keyblade as a support. "But... but you're... this isn't like you at all! What's gotten into you?"

The false Riku took a step toward him, grinning evilly. He looked much like the actual Riku, with one exception-_-_his eyes were glowing orange and pupilless, and he seemed to never blink. The silver-haired boy raised his Keyblade high over his head, preparing to smash it down into Sora at full force, but then paused for a moment to say something.

"It's always the same old thing with you," he said, "Isn't it?"

He swung downward, narrowly missing as Sora rolled out of the way.

"What's gotten into you?", the false Riku said, imitating his opponent in an exaggeratedly whiny voice. "This isn't like you at all! What have they done to you?"

Sora paused for a moment, tears now streaming down both of his cheeks, just staring up at the boy who claimed to be Riku in front of him. And then, Sora snapped, lunging forward with a powerful battle cry and slamming his Keyblade down toward the silver-haired boy's shoulder. Riku blocked at the last moment, but he was visibly shaken by the power of the blow; he had clearly not been expecting that. He hopped back and prepared for his usual lunging counterattack, but he was interrupted by a sudden crash behind him that caused the church's heavy wooden doors to go flying past him in splinters.

"What?", the false Riku said, turning to face the intruders, "No! He was supposed to be alone!"

Aqua dashed in at full speed, almost appearing to be floating along the surface of the floor rather than moving like an ordinary person, and with a single whirling slash caused the Riku replica to collapse to the floor before vanishing and leaving nothing but his armor behind. Terra, Ven, and Ignis came in not far behind her, glancing around the room for a few moments before focusing on the spot where Sora was standing.

"Are you okay?", Ven asked, running up to the boy. He backed away a bit at first, but then suddenly seemed to recognize the spiky-haired blonde and calmed down a bit.

"Yeah, Ven... I... I'm okay, but Riku..."

"That _wasn't _Riku," Aqua said, crouching down slightly and lightly hugging Sora with one arm in an attempt to comfort him. "It was just a trick of this room. The real Riku is finishing up his own Mark of Mastery exam right now... there's nothing to worry about."

"Yep," Terra said, "Riku's doing great, and you'll be fine once we get you out of here. You just weren't ready yet, that's all."

"Yeah, not everybody passes on their first try," Ignis added. He then grinned and jabbed the tallest of the Keybearers lightly with one elbow before continuing. "Right, Terra?"

* * *

Meanwhile, back on Riku's side of the room, he and the false Sora were locked in furious combat, each alternating between swinging and blocking the other's attacks so quickly that observers on the outside might not even be able to distinguise every individual attack. Eventually, however, the simulated Sora managed to get a good hit in, sending Riku spinning into one of the pews and smashing through it. He staggered to his feet, clutching his back for a moment, and then charged in for another attack, rushing past his opponent and slashing him across the side. The glowing-eyed Sora was knocked away, but quickly caught himself with his spare hand and lashed out at Riku with a wide swing that only narrowly missed the silver-haired boy's face.

"That was close," Riku mumbled, jumping back a bit to move his face even further out of range. "Maybe the helmet's not such a bad idea after all..."

Once again, the fake Sora laughed before charging in for a powerful series of blows, catching Riku off guard and sending him smashing through the podium and into the wall behind it. He slumped to the ground, attempting to pull himself up but feeling a spike of pain in his chest; that last crash landing had almost certainly broken a rib. As Sora's likeness began to climb the short set of steps leading to the pulpit, Riku managed to drag himself back to his feet using the wall behind him as a support. He couldn't go on like this much longer-_-_there was no way this computer-generated freak was only on Sora's level. There was one bit of good news, however: this was almost certainly the final test. As soon as he figured out a way to finish off this last opponent, he was done.

He readied his Keyblade once again, but at this point it hurt to even move; he wasn't sure how he was going to get through this. The holographic Sora finally reached the same level where Riku was standing and spun his Keyblade by the chain for a second, grinning evilly all the way; he then tossed it into the air and caught it by the handle once again before charging in for a finishing blow. Riku braced himself for the impact and hoped for a miracle; maybe, just maybe, if he could block an attack like that in his condition, he would be able to get in a final attack of his own while his opponent was off guard.

_"Well, here goes nothing..."_

Sora flew through the air in Riku's direction, Keyblade held high over his head. He was almost certainly going to try to plunge it downward into him-_-_no, _through _him. This wasn't the same carefree young Sora he shared the first half of the test with; he was a ruthless maniac who would stop at nothing to destroy his enemies, and worse, actually had the power to do so. Riku raised his Keyblade, but he knew that he didn't have enough strength left to block such an attack; though it was only a test, it certainly felt real enough at this point, and he could almost feel his short life getting ready to flash before his eyes as Sora's Keyblade came closer and closer toward him as if in slow motion. And then, milliseconds before impact, he closed his eyes...

...and Sora's attack never came. It didn't even clash against his Keyblade like he had been expecting. Riku opened his eyes to see that his entire body was surrounded a swirling barrier of purplish-black energy interlaced with what appeared to be translucent hexagons, occasionally vanishing only to flicker back into place seconds later. Sora had apparently been thrown back with such force that he had crashed through one of the pews, and he now was lying on the floor, still conscious but clearly stunned. After a second passed, he charged forward and attempt to penetrate the mysterious barrier with another attack, but it vanished moments before impact and he instead found himself on the wrong end of Riku's Keyblade, slashing upward into his gut and sending him crashing back to the floor once again.

"That's it... he's finished."

Riku finally managed to pull himself away from the wall, leaning on his Keyblade like a cane for balance and taking a few hesitant steps in the direction of the fallen Sora-clone. The boy's face disappeared, leaving nothing but an empty suit of armor and a deactivated Keyblade lying on the floor before him. Seconds later, it became clear that his earlier guess had been correct; the battle against the altered Sora had been his final test, and his Mark of Mastery exam was now over, as evidenced by the fact that the holographic training room had once again faded to a black void before returning to its usual appearance when it was not turned on.

"But... what _was _that?"

A familiar voice came from behind him, and he turned to see Terra standing in the open doorway to the room, looking as if he had just come _out _rather than in.

"What was what?"

Glancing past the older Keybearer, Riku could see Aqua and Ven walking away from the doorway with Sora, each supporting him as they walked together down the hallway leading back to the rest of the base. Ignis stood nearby, clipping his Keyblade back to his belt and flinching slightly as something he did apparently caused some pain to his frostbitten fingers.

"I dunno," Riku said, "In the last part of the test... something _really _weird happened."

"I'd call _a lot _of what happened in there 'weird.' Can you be a little more specific?"

"You know, that thing with the purple mist and hexagons... didn't you see that?"

Terra just shrugged.

"Guess I wasn't watching for that part... too busy helping them get Sora out of here. He made it to the final test, but then he kind of panicked."

"Yeah," Riku said, scratching his head slightly. "I can see why... I mean, _I _probably would've freaked if I was still his age, too."

Terra laughed a bit, then turned to leave the room, with Riku following as quickly as he could considering his injured state. Before long, the vault door was closed once again, and the three remaining Keybearers began the walk back toward Ansem's office to report the results of the latest Mark of Mastery exam.

"Hey, cheer up," Ignis said, turning toward the silver-haired boy and noticing that he still looked a bit worried. "I'm pretty sure you passed."

"Yeah... I... I'm just worried about Sora, that's all," Riku said, not mentioning his concern about the strange barrier that had somehow appeared just in time to save him. "I mean, Terra said he freaked out and they had to take him out early... I hope he's okay."

"He'll be fine," Terra said. "Now come on, we've got to get you patched up so we can tell Ansem the good news."


	24. Behind Enemy Lines

**CHAPTER 23**  
_~ Behind Enemy Lines ~_

The numbered members of the Organization stood at the entrance of the Dimensional Hippievan's launch tunnel, well-rested from the previous night's sleep and as prepared as they would ever be for the journey that now awaited them. A few non-numbered members hung around in the halls nearby, watching as Xemnas went over the details of the plan once again; though they knew that none of them were permitted to tag along on a mission as potentially-dangerous as this one was sure to be, they still couldn't help but want to be there to watch their fellow Fangirl-exterminators leave.

"Vexen and Zexion," he said, glancing across the crowd of black-cloaked men gathered in front of him until his gaze stopped on the two scientists. "The two of you are absolutely vital to this mission. I'm sure you already understand what your tasks will be once inside."

The two nodded slightly, and Xemnas turned toward the largest member of the group, tilting his head up slightly so as to look him in the eyes.

"And Lexaeus," he said, pacing a bit. "As Zexion had suggested earlier, you too will be going. Your duty is to deal with any threats, Fangirl or otherwise, that the others accompanying you are not capable of handling on their own."

The giant of a man nodded as well.

"Understood."

The three who had been decided upon took their positions in the Dimensional Hippievan, with Vexen hopping into the driver's seat as he usually did and Zexion taking the front passenger's seat. Lexaeus slid open the side door and sat down in one of the seats in the middle, though with someone his size there it was unlikely that anyone else would take the other.

"And finally... the fourth member of the team," Xemnas said, waving his hands a bit for emphasis as he always did. "Ordinarily, I would not consider sending away _both _of our medically-trained members away on what may be a long-term mission... however, Vexen has assured me that those he has trained will be fully capable of handling your duties while you are away."

Marluxia stepped forward from the back of the crowd, where he had been standing alongside Axel and Demyx before, a bit unsure about Xemnas' decision but trusting Vexen's opinion when it came to the abilities of his own trainees.

"Marluxia... with your combination of medical and combat skills," Xemnas said, turning and noticing that the pink-haired man had already stepped forward a bit. "I have no doubt that those abilities could be very useful on a mission such as this. Take your seat in the Dimensional Hippievan."

He nodded, then walked past Xemnas and climbed into the still-open side door of the vehicle, taking one of the several seats in the back that were left completely empty. With the Roxas-retrieval team fully assembled, Lexaeus slid the side door shut and Vexen turned the key, starting the Dimensional Hippievan on its gradually-accelerating trip down the launch tunnel. On the far end of the runway, the side of the mountain shifted in order to make an opening, and before long the van had rocketed off into the sky before disappearing with a flash of energy.

While the Hippievan hurtled through the void toward their destination, the members inside briefly spoke about where they were going. They had decided to land the Hippievan in the same abandoned quarry that Vexen had used for his test-run of the phone before, as its remote location and utter lack of any human inhabitants meant that there was not much chance that any random bystander would see a flying Volkswagen van or four cloaked men vanishing into a portal. It also provided a long enough runway for the van to return to the base on autopilot; there was always a chance that more Fangirl swarms would appear while they were away, after all, so keeping the Organization's only means of rapid cross-country travel sitting in a rock pit the whole time they were gone wasn't an option. They didn't know how long their dive into the Internet was going to take, after all-_-_it could be hours, or it could be days. It was, as Lexaeus had said before, an unexplored frontier, and they had no way of knowing what the journey across that frontier was going to be like.

As the van rolled to a stop in the flat bottom of the old rock quarry, the four jumped out of their respective doors and walked away from the vehicle's path. Almost immediately, its engine rumbled back to life as its automatic systems kicked in, sending it flying off back to the base.

"Well, this is it," Marluxia said, summoning his scythe in a flash of reddish-pink energy and a brief fluttering of flower petals. "No turning back from here."

Lexaeus nodded, stretching out one hand and calling forth his own weapon in a wave of dark reddish energy that came from below his feet and surged upward. Vexen and Zexion did the same, and in a matter of seconds all four were ready for whatever might be waiting for them in the bizarre electronic world where the Fangirls-_-_and, hopefully, Roxas-_-_lurked. Casting his shield aside for a moment and causing it to levitate in midair behind him, Vexen tapped away at the phone for a few seconds, then placed it gently on the ground as he waited for the portal to open. This time, he had entered the very same set of coordinates that Zagan had used the night that Roxas was kidnapped; this would take them not to some harmless auction website, but to the heart of Fangirl territory.

"Everyone ready?", Vexen asked, glancing back over his shoulder at the other three as he grasped his shield once again and returned it to its usual position. Everyone nodded, and almost instantly the portal to the Internet swirled into existence in front of them, zeroes and ones flickering all around as it bathed the ground around the Organization members in strange green light.

"Let's go," Lexaeus said, hefting his weapon onto his shoulder and taking his first steps toward the portal. Zexion nodded and followed not far behind, clutching his closed book tightly under one of his arms. Marluxia was the last to enter, carefully stepping over the phone on the ground as he passed through the portal and was instantly transported to the most bizarre place he had ever seen.

All around them there was a strange blue light, much like what Vexen had seen on his first trip-_-_but this time, there was something distinctly different about it. Rather than the pure blue of the calm zone that he had briefly explored before, this blue was a more greenish hue; looking further into the distance, the entire landscape shifted into greener and greener shades until somewhere miles away _everything _looked as if an entire swarm of Fangirls had just exploded. Even further off, hovering over the horizon, was a white circular object of some sort; it almost reminded the Organization members of a moon hanging low in the sky.

"Well, _that _certainly wasn't visible before," Vexen said, staring at the white sphere with his hand held to his chin. "Interesting. I suppose that must be the core of the Internet itself, if our observations about the locations of Zagan's entry points were correct."

"A floating white sphere," Marluxia mumbled. "I can't see it well enough from here, but... I wouldn't be surprised at all if it's just like the one in Naminé's drawings."

Lexaeus turned toward him, a slight look of confusion coming over his face.

"Hmm? What's that?"

"It's something she claimed to see in Zagan's memories," he explained. "The day after Roxas vanished, when Zagan's glasses slipped for just a moment and she was able to take a glimpse into his memory for the first time... that white orb, floating in the void, was there."

Zexion sniffed the air (or whatever it was that passed for air in the Internet) slightly, attempting to pick up on any trace of either Zagan or Roxas' residual energy but having a bit of difficulty due to the age of the trail.

"If that's so," he said, turning toward Marluxia during a pause between sniffs, "Then I'm betting that white orb is our destination."

"Certainly a possibility," Vexen said, taking a few steps away from the platform where they had landed and glancing at the myriad winding paths of translucent energy that snaked off into the distance. "And I can already sense it from here, even at such a distance... some sort of incredible power is hiding within that orb."

"I've got something," Zexion said, immediately alerting the other three. He had taken a few steps out onto one of the paths, which apparently had traces of one or both of their targets' energies. "It's faint, but I think I can make do. Zagan definitely went this way."

"No sign of Roxas?", Lexaeus asked, taking a few steps over to the side of his smaller friend.

"Not yet," he answered, sniffing the air slightly as he slowly walked forward along the barely-visible path before him. "But that's no surprise. He was hardly in any condition to leave much of a trail when he was taken..."

The four walked onward, following Zexion as he sniffed out the trail of energy that Zagan had left behind. Vexen briefly wondered how much more difficult this might have been if the kidnapper had been among the Keybearers rather than one of their own-_-_he and Estera both had noticed during the battle with Ignis that neither of their armored opponents seemed to put off much excess energy unless they were actively fighting, whereas members of the Organization were always surrounded by a faint aura of their elemental power even when at rest. Would a fleeing Keybearer have even left a trail for Zexion to follow?

Before long, they had reached the next solid-looking patch of... whatever you would call the strange substance that made up the Internet's landscapes. This one resembled the metallic structure of the auction website that Vexen had visited, though its shape was very different; rather than a coliseum, it looked more like a tower wrought from strange blue metal, with symbols of all sorts engraved into its outer edges. On closer inspection, the symbols appeared to be graffiti, written in all different languages and randomly scattered about. Some messages were simply curse-words and dirty jokes, while others insulted political figures or companies that the author apparently didn't feel too fondly about. Still others appeared to be complete nonsense, written in a distorted form of language that resembled the Fangirls' excited gibbering more than coherent sentences.

"This tower," Lexaeus said, craning his neck in an attempt to see exactly how far into the space above them it stretched. "Looks like it's... 40, maybe 45 stories high. Though that would depend on the height of the ceilings inside, of course."

Marluxia nodded, then turned to Zexion.

"What about the trail?", he asked, "Does it lead up through _that?_"

"That's right," Zexion said, taking his book out from under his arm and opening it up for the first time. "Fortunately, there's no exits on any floor short of the top... so we can take a bit of a shortcut."

He waved his hand over the lexicon's pages, and in an instant it began to swirl with blue and black energy before growing to several times its usual size. Zexion let go of the book and it simply hung in midair, floating there like a magic carpet; a moment later, that was exactly how he was using it, climbing onto its oversized pages and sitting with his legs crossed in the crease between them.

As the youngest of the group spiraled upward around the tower on his makeshift elevator, Lexaeus flexed his free arm and then thrust it upward, causing a massive pillar of rock to burst forth beneath his feet with incredible force and launch him upward. He landed several stories above his starting point, grabbing a handrail along one of the tower's many balconies and taking a brief glance into the window nearby.

"It's... some sort of library," he said, somewhat stunned at this realization. "Odd."

As the largest of the members launched himself up another few stories before pausing once again to take a look at the structure's rooms, Vexen and Marluxia had both begun to make their own way toward the top. The older of the two simply concentrated his power on the floor beneath his feet, creating a pillar of ice that gradually grew taller and taller, coming nearer to the top of the tower with every second that Vexen continued to focus his power on it. Marluxia, on the other hand, dematerialized his scythe and lashed out at one of the railings a few stories above with a series of vines generated from the palms of his hands, rapidly climbing his way up using the plants as grappling hooks. Before long, all four had reached the flat roof of the tower, and Zexion returned his book to its usual size before tucking it safely under his arm once again.

Before anyone could ask the blue-haired scholar which way the trail went next, the giggles of Fangirls suddenly began to rise up from somewhere below them. Lexaeus glanced down over the edge of the tower and saw dozens of them pouring out from every window and climbing straight up the sides of the structure with their claw-like hands, rapidly approaching the place where the Organization members had paused for the moment.

"Looks like a lot of them," he said, glancing around and noticing that Marluxia had re-summoned his scythe at the moment he heard the creatures approaching. "Unfortunately for them... we have the high ground."

He took a step closer to the edge and held his massive tomahawk out over the gap, pausing for just a moment before letting it drop straight down. The weapon at first appeared to be falling purely due to gravity, but it soon became clear that its descent was actually being controlled quite carefully by its master, swerving out of the way to avoid damaging the balconies as it effortlessly plowed through every Fangirl it touched. The other members soon joined in, and before long the Fangirls were being pelted by an unending barrage of icicles, spiked vines, and various heavy objects conjured through Zexion's illusion powers. Just as the last of the swarm was almost cleared away, Lexaeus' heavy blade came spinning back upward like a boomerang, finishing off a few stragglers as it rose up and came to a complete stop in the grip of his powerful hand.

"Definitely coming into Fangirl territory now," Marluxia said, wiping a bit of sweat off his forehead and taking a few steps in Zexion's direction. "We should get moving before any more of them show up. Which way now?"

"There," Zexion pointed. There was a platform of semi-solid energy hovering in midair, close enough for any of the Organization members to make the jump but well beyond what an ordinary person would have been capable of. "It doesn't look like much, but... I'm pretty sure I can pick up a trace of Zagan's scent on that one."

* * *

In the headquarters of the Keybearers, several soldiers sat around the radio systems and listened as reports came in from the outside. As of yet no swarms had appeared, either of the familiar Fangirls or their new male counterparts, but something was certainly up; Fangirl-like activity in several sectors of the Internet was spiking to dangerous levels only to rapidly wind down. One of the armored men turned to another, sitting at the chair in front of the radio equipment, and asked the most obvious question possible.

"What on Earth is going on out there?"

"More like _in _there," the seated Keybearer said, turning his head slightly. "At least at the moment. Fangirls all across the Internet are going nuts, but none of our guys out in the field have said a word about any swarms yet."

"Anything like this ever happened before?"

The seated one shook his head.

"Not to my knowledge," he said, looking over some printouts of summarized data from previous months. "Doesn't look like anything in these records, either..."

"Strange. What do you think's causing it?"

"No idea," he said, pausing to listen to a brief message over the radio before continuing. "But after what happened to Anderson the other day, it's got everyone out there spooked. Maybe the Fangirls are changing again..."

"Maybe... doesn't explain the sudden drops in activity, though. I... I think I'd better inform Master Ansem before things get worse."

"Yeah. With the Fangirls acting up like this, it'd have to be one hell of a swarm if they _did _decide to come through..."

The standing Keybearer nodded slightly, then hurried off to inform Ansem, silently hoping that his leader would decide that this was a job for a Keyblade Master rather than an ordinary soldier like himself.

* * *

"Well, we're getting closer," Zexion said, leaping onto another metallic platform and sniffing a bit to get back onto Zagan's trail. "I'm getting very slight traces of Roxas here and there now, along with Zagan... he must have been coming in and out of consciousness around this point."

Vexen leaped onto the platform after him, stopping to catch his breath for a moment before walking out a bit further and taking a look around. For a split-second the metal surface shook slightly as Lexaeus landed on its edge with his full weight. Once Marluxia had jumped on as well, the entire group was assembled and they paused to take in the sights around them. Off to one side was another tower much like the one they had climbed before, though this one was a fraction of the other's height and appeared to be only partially constructed; on the other side were a series of bunker-like structures of various colors, each of which seemed to have a variety of weapons mounted on the top. On closer inspection, these weapons were all pointed at one or more of the other bunkers, as if they were divided into several alliances that were just waiting for a war to break out.

"I must come back here to investigate all this someday," Vexen said, glancing around at several more strange metal buildings far below them in the green-blue void of the Internet. "Unfortunately, the task at hand is far too important for such detours. Let us continue."

The others nodded, following Zexion down a series of metallic stairs as he tracked Zagan's path through the bizarre landscape. For what seemed like at least a mile, the path was nothing more than a flat road, but before long the Organization members began to realize that something strange was going on.

"This road," Lexaeus said, looking down at his feet and then back behind him. "Ever since we got on it... we haven't moved an inch."

"What? That's absurd! Surely we must have..."

Vexen's words were cut short as he, too, took a look behind him and saw that same set of stairs standing right where it was when they had first started walking. His eye twitched slightly, and he clenched one fist tightly in anger.

"Damn you, Zagan," he spat, glancing in the other direction and seeing that the road seemed to have no end. "Leading us right into a trap... you _would_ do something like this, you traitorous piece of-_-_"

"Wait," Zexion said, taking out his book and flipping through it. "Things may not be as they appear... leave this to me."

He mumbled something under his breath, holding one hand out in front of him and glancing back and forth from his surroundings to the pages of the book. Dark blue energy swirled around his hand for a moment before spreading out over his surroundings in all directions, and he stared straight down the path ahead of him and looked closely, focusing on anything that seemed unusual. Before long, he spotted a strange ripple of energy in the air not ten feet away from where he was standing; normally, it would have been completely invisible.

"Watch this," he said, keeping his book open and his hand held out as he walked forward. As soon as he passed beyond the distorted zone of space, he suddenly vanished, only to reappear at the base of the stairs behind the other members.

"So... it's some sort of portal," Vexen said, calming down a bit from his previous outburst. "Hidden all but perfectly... had we not brought along one with the power to see through illusions, that is."

"There's no illusion," Zexion said, "If there was, I would have seen through it immediately."

Marluxia glanced down at the smaller man, unsure of exactly what he was saying.

"Then what _is _going on?"

"That portal is nearly invisible," Zexion explained. "There's no need to hide it away; we had to have walked through it and been linked back to the start of the path hundreds of times before anyone noticed. My power only made the telltale distortion in space a bit easier to see."

"I see," Lexaeus said. "Now, the question is... how do we get around it?"

"That shouldn't be a problem," Zexion said, closing his book and causing the circle of blue energy that had illuminated his surroundings to fade away. "The portal is only as wide as this pathway and about seven feet tall, so we should be able to go over or around it without much difficulty."

Marluxia stepped forward, bracing himself for a moment before taking a flying leap toward the area where Zexion had disappeared before. He landed just on the other side of the portal and remained where he landed, rather than being sent back once again.

"Should be easy enough," the largest of the men said, hefting his tomahawk onto his shoulder and getting a brief running start before easily clearing the invisible doorway. Vexen followed shortly afterward, leaving Zexion alone on the other side of the portal. He chose to go around the portal rather than over it, causing his lexicon to float in the void beside the pathway and using it as a stepping-stone. Once he had picked it up, he returned to the front of the line once again and continued to track the path Zagan and Roxas had taken.

Once again they walked for what seemed like at least a mile before they saw any change in their surroundings, and unlike their first attempt they really _had_ covered that much distance this time around. No Fangirls appeared during their journey, though the entire time they heard a variety of odd voices chattering on about all sorts of different things. As the voices came closer, it became clear that they were advertisements; nearly half of them seemed to be pushing drugs aimed toward a certain problem common in older men, with such thinly-veiled descriptions as "male enhancement." Lexaeus glanced over his shoulder and spotted the source of one of these advertisements-_-_what appeared to be a billboard floating through the void of the Internet, propelled by some sort of small robotic device attached to the back. As the voices grew louder, the other three members stopped as well, each turning and noticing that nearly a dozen of the hovering advertisements had started following them.

"Pop-up ads," Zexion groaned. "Of course... this is the Internet, after all."

A swarm of billboard-robots hawking Viagra and Cialis for under a dollar surrounded Vexen, apparently sensing that he was the oldest of the group and altering their behavior accordingly. He growled and swiped at them with his shield, but every time he came close to actually hitting one it would quickly drift out of his reach.

Before long, several groups among the ads had split off and targeted one of the Organization members, hovering around them like clouds of mosquitoes and only being momentarily deterred by swipes of their targets' weapons. Zexion, being the youngest, was being assaulted by a variety of promotions for games and social-networking sites; Marluxia was barely managing to keep the various online dating sites (one, it seemed, for every possible demographic) at scythe-length. Lexaeus found himself surrounded by ads for gambling sites and weightlifting equipment, and briefly wondered if the popups had somehow mistaken him for Luxord.

"These things have _got _to go," Marluxia said, swatting at what appeared to be a popup advertising a dating site exclusively for farmers.

"That shouldn't take long," Vexen said, raising one hand in the direction of an ad that seemed to be trying to get him to dye the gray out of his hair. "They've avoided our weapons so far, but I doubt they have been programmed to avoid something like... _this._"

A burst of frigid air rushed forward from his hand, surrounding the nearest popup in a thin layer of ice and causing its robotic parts to whirr and buzz in an attempt to move. Seconds afterward, it fell to the ground and smashed apart, its repetitive voice slowing at first and then coming to a complete stop.

"Now... let's take care of the rest before they learn how to dodge our powers as well."

All four of the black-cloaked men immediately went to work destroying every popup ad they could see. Lexaeus threw his tomahawk at the nearest popup, causing it to back away a bit; not quite far enough, of course, as the heavy weapon smashed it to pieces the instant it stopped moving. He then controlled its flight path through the air so that it spiraled around him and destroyed every other popup ad in the area, showering the path with broken chunks of metal and sparking fragments of the electronic billboards that made up the "faces" of the annoying advertisements.

Marluxia lashed out with his scythe, causing a wave of cutting force to project outward and instantly slice several popups in half as they attempted to float out of his reach as they had done before. Vexen froze his own popups one by one with quick blasts of ice, causing some to shatter on the ground and others to fall down into the blue-green abyss below. Finally, Zexion created several illusory duplicates of himself and had them sneak up behind each of the popups, smashing them apart with heavy swings of their books as the things backed away from the real Zexion's attacks and floated right into the reach of the clones. Before long, the popups had been silenced, and the Organization's four-man team was once again free to walk down the long path ahead of them unmolested.

Eventually, they noticed they were approaching what appeared for all the world to be a suburban residential area, though the lawns were nothing more than bumpy green metal and in place of white picket fences there were distorted metal spikes spiraling up from the ground in rows, sometimes becoming tangled up in each other part of the way up. The houses, of course, were metallic and came in various colors, much like every other structure they had come across on their journey through the Internet's expanse.

"Houses," Vexen muttered, "No doubt crawling with Fangirls..."

"Let's hope nobody's home," Lexaeus said, readying his weapon just in case.

Unfortunately, it quickly became clear that someone _was _home, at least if Fangirls and Fanboys by the hundreds could really be counted as "someone." They came swarming out of every opening in the metal neighborhood's identical houses, some climbing atop the buildings to prepare for long-range attacks on the intruders while others mindlessly charged forward to meet them in close combat. Lexaeus and Marluxia rushed in to meet them, each of them shattering several Glompers with each swing, as Vexen approached more slowly with his shield raised to deflect the fireballs from the many Flamers perched atop the houses. Zexion hung back, opening his book and beginning to weave illusions that would distract the countless hordes away from his comrades long enough for them to get through.

A Preggo Fangirl on a nearby roof lifted its shirt and prepared to launch one of its disturbing pregnancy-inducing rays into Marluxia's unprotected back, but before it could charge up the energy necessary to fire, Vexen raised one hand in its direction and it found itself frozen in a solid block of ice. As one of Lexaeus' mighty blows shook the entire structure after crushing a Yaoinator, the frozen Fangirl slipped off the edge of the house and shattered into many pieces as it was impaled on one of the fences below.

"So, how many do you think there are?", Marluxia asked, glancing back toward Vexen for a moment. "Hundreds? Thousands?"

"At least a thousand," he answered, "Though they're moving around too quickly for me to get a much more accurate measurement than that... it's safe to say this is by far the largest swarm any of us has ever come upon."

The pink-haired man nodded, slicing several Homophobia Fangirls behind him in half with a quick swing of his scythe before they had a chance to attack him. Lexaeus did the same to a line of Yaoinators, nearly all of which seemed to all be waving flags marked "5x6;" Zexion shuddered a bit at the sight of them, continuing to formulate a powerful illusion but occasionally being momentarily distracted by one of the weaker Fangirls that managed to slip through the cracks and come after him. Vexen lowered his shield for a moment to slug a Shifter Fangirl in the face before it had a chance to come up with its opinion of his power, not wanting to have his strength sapped away in the middle of such a dangerous situation. The creature toppled backward and begun to stand up, but it was quickly destroyed as Lexaeus shook the ground once again and several of the larger Fanboys on the roof above it fell down and crushed it beneath their weight.

"We really do need to come up with names for those," Lexaeus commented, realizing that they had cataloged the various types of Fangirls but had so far made no such effort for their recently-spawned male counterparts. Up on the rooftop, one of the muscular creatures took one look at him and then leaped off in his direction, its text-symbol face shifting to one of rage.

"Ugh, Lexaeus!", it screamed, flailing its fists helplessly at him as he caught its nearly-hairless head in his free hand and held it just far enough away that it couldn't actually hit him. "You suck! Axel could kick your ass!"

Marluxia laughed out loud at this suggestion; he could hardly imagine scrawny little Axel even managing to lay a single hand on Lexaeus before being effortlessly swatted aside. The redhead couldn't even manage to lift Lexaeus' weapon with both hands; there was no way Axel's moderate advantage in speed could ever hope to overcome such an incredible gap in both power and experience.

"I suppose he could, if he managed to sneak up quietly enough," Lexaeus said, "If you mean that literally, that is. Otherwise..."

He put more pressure on the Fanboy's head, causing it to flail wildly for just a moment before shattering into green light and a scattering of computer code.

"That variety of Fanboy seems to focus its attentions on only one of us at a time," Vexen said, making a mental note to himself to write all of this down when he returned to the base. "Assuming this is their primary trait, I suppose we could call them 'Haters.'"

Marluxia narrowly missed a Hyper Fangirl as it bounced into the air over his scythe in mid-swing, diving down toward him and slamming into his chest before bouncing off in some other direction. Out of the corner of his eye, he spotted Vexen swatting it to the ground with his shield before finishing it off with a stomp of his boot; several Flamers launched their balls of fire at the old scientist at this moment, one of them managing to connect with his back before he was able to move his shield back into position and deflect it. Three Glompers latched on to Lexaeus by his shoulders and began to drain away at his massive supplies of energy, but before they could accomplish much he destroyed them all with a shockwave of reddish power that surged up all around him.

"We can't just stay here fighting these things forever," Zexion shouted in the direction of the group, who had now moved even further into the Fangirl suburb. "Not much longer now... I'm almost done with something that should hold them off for a good half-hour at least."

He noticed a scraping sound from behind him, but at first did not pay it any mind. When he heard it again just seconds later, however, he spun around and found himself looking straight into the eyes of a Stalker Fangirl, scooting up behind him in its cardboard box and preparing to pounce. With one swift motion, he stuck out one foot and turned its box around just enough so that it jumped not at him but off the edge of the path, plummeting down to parts unknown with a screech of disappointment.

"That was close," he mumbled, turning his attention back toward his nearly-complete illusion. "Now, just another few seconds and..."

Suddenly, the screeching of the Fangirls and the hoots and hollers of Fanboys were all silenced as a legion of black-cloaked shapes began to walk toward them from the other end of the housing area, all removing their hoods in unison and revealing themselves to be illusion copies of the entire Organization. They then tossed aside their cloaks and began dancing around provocatively, causing a deafening squeal to rise up from hundreds upon hundreds of Fangirls.

Lexaeus sighed and shook his head at the sight, while Marluxia flinched away for a moment but then found himself peeking at the dancing images of several members no matter how hard he tried not to. Vexen just grinned, watching as several duplicates of himself gyrated in front of a mob of drooling Fangirls.

"Hah! Looks like I've still got it!", he laughed, earning simultaneous groans from all three of the other members present.

Before the Organization XIII strip show could proceed any further, the four actual members leaped up onto a rooftop that had recently become completely vacant and began to run toward the other end of the suburban area, making a quick hop over to the next roof every time they reached the edge of one. Nearly all of the Fangirls were unable to peel their text-symbol eyes away from the progressively less-clothed male Organization members, with the dozen copies of Axel and Zexion attracting nearly half of the swarm between them; the Fanboys, too, were distracted by dancing images of Larxene and other female members. Some even appeared to be _worshiping_ the illusions; as he looked back one last time, he noticed three Fanboys and a Fangirl that seemed to be bowing down in front of a topless dancing Kisaki. Notably absent from the ranks of stripping Fangirl-exterminators was Naminé. Marluxia most likely would have strangled him if he _hadn't _left her out, after all, and on top of that the scene was already disturbing enough without any underage girls being involved.

Once they had reached the outskirts of the Fangirl-infested town, they hopped down from the tops of buildings and returned to a more normal pace; Zexion's illusion would likely hold off the swarm for at least another twenty minutes, so they had a head start on the Fangirls even if they did manage to figure out which direction their targets had run off in. Marluxia glanced over at Zexion as he slowed his pace to get back on the trail of Zagan, still a bit shocked that his blue-haired friend had actually thought of that.

"Never knew you had such a dirty mind in there, Scudder," he said, smiling slightly. "Don't worry, though... I won't say a word about that little show to Larxene."

"Thanks," Zexion sighed, a bit embarrassed at himself that _he_had thought of such a thing. "I'm honestly more worried about Kisaki finding out, though... knowing her, she'd take it as some kind of bizarre compliment."

Vexen and Marluxia both snickered; for a moment, even Lexaeus cracked a smile. Before long, however, the group returned their focus to the mission ahead of them; they could see another massive metal staircase rising up in front of them, this one easily ten times taller than the one they had come down before. In addition to that, the white orb that was once far off in the distance now loomed uncomfortably close; so close, in fact, that Vexen could actually sense a faint flicker of Roxas' energy from within in addition to the powerful aura of Fangirlism that saturated it.

"Not much longer now," Lexaeus grunted, wiping a few drops of sweat off of his forehead and shouldering his weapon once again.

"Yeah," Zexion added, "And the trail's stronger than ever here, too. Zagan's scent is still fresh... he must have come back to this area sometime more recently."

"What about that orb?", Vexen asked, "Are you able to detect anything more specific about the immense Fangirl energy within it yet?"

"Unfortunately, no," the shorter man answered, taking a quick sniff to make sure his statement was still accurate after taking a few more steps. "I can't pick up anything more specific than what you're seeing from this distance. There's an overwhelming scent of Fangirls, but... I can't even tell if it's just one or a swarm of weaker ones just yet."

"I suppose that means we should move in closer," Lexaeus said, taking the first steps up the gigantic staircase. "Now let's go before those Fangirls back there figure out they've been tricked."

* * *

Back in the Organization's sickbay, Larxene sat up in her bed and glanced over at the pile of books that Kisaki had brought for her the day before. She had absentmindedly flipped through one of them before, but quickly found that it wasn't able to hold her interest for long; now, she was getting so bored that she actually thought about looking through the rest of the stack to at least see if there was anything worth reading mixed in with the rest of the garbage.

"Hmm," she mumbled to herself, "More romance novels, a few kids' books... what the heck is this, some kind of video game strategy guide?"

Shrugging, she tossed it down onto her bed, figuring that it would at least keep her distracted from the boredom for a few minutes. She then continued her search through the pile of books, finding several volumes of some manga she had never heard of, a few books that appeared to be about vampires, and more of the barely-readable mush that seemed to make up most of the pile. Eventually, she reached the large book on the bottom of the stack, which appeared to be filled up with rather depressing poetry written sometime in the late '90s. She pushed it aside at first, but then noticed something unusual about the book and picked it up again, opening it up and shaking it slightly. Just as she had suspected, there was a loose sheet of paper tucked in between two of its pages.

"Huh," she said, plucking the mysterious sheet up off of her bed and dropping the book it had come from back into the pile with the rest. "Wonder what _this _is..."

She unfolded it and quickly read over the words hurriedly scrawled across the top of the page, then rolled her eyes and crumpled it into a ball.

"What was that?", Estera asked, walking over toward Larxene's bed and arranging the messy pile of books back into a neat stack again so none of them would be damaged. "Did she leave you a note along with the books or something?"

"Not really," the blonde groaned, uncrumpling the page and holding it up to Estera's face. "It fell out of that book of angsty poetry over there. I guess she was trying to write some of her own and left it in there by accident, or something."

The bespectacled girl blinked a bit, quickly reading over the page. She seemed a bit confused by something she saw there, glancing back toward Larxene with a slightly worried frown on her face.

"Are you sure? Judging by the look of the handwriting, whoever wrote this was pretty upset about something..."

"Well hey," Larxene said, balling up the scrap of paper again and tossing it to the other girl, who snatched it out of the air in mid-flight. "If you wanna try and wring some deeper meaning out of this garbage, go ahead... but I'm really not interested."

* * *

Vexen, Lexaeus, Zexion, and Marluxia stood at the top of the massive staircase, now within only a few minutes' walk from the white orb that had previously been hovering off in the distance. The last visible obstacle that remained was a bridge of narrow semi-solid energy platforms, loosely connected to each other and swaying back and forth in midair. Glancing down into the depths below the bridge, the four Organization members saw that for once there was more than just an endless green void below them-_-_here, the abyss was obscured by a rushing river of text, flowing by so rapidly that it was difficult to make out any individual words, though it was clear that there were an abundance of "at" signs and number symbols.

"Hmm," Vexen said, peering into the river as thousands of words and sentence fragments rushed by so rapidly that even his analytical eyes could barely distinguish them. "Thousands of garbled words rushing by every second, with hash-tags and at-signs all over... I suppose this is what kids these days call 'Twitter.'"

"And it takes the form of a river rushing around the center of the Internet," Zexion said, glancing away from the flurry of words and up at the white orb. "Of course, considering that eBay turned out to be an imitation of the Roman coliseum filled with storage containers, this shouldn't be much of a surprise."

After several minutes of standing there just staring at the two strange landmarks in front of them, the Organization members got back to the task at hand-_-_entering the core of the Internet and finding Roxas, if that was indeed where he was still being held. Lexaeus turned toward Zexion and spoke, asking a question he figured he already knew the answer to.

"Zagan's scent leads straight into that white orb, correct?"

Zexion nodded.

"Yes," he answered, "It's very strong here... I don't think he's still inside at the moment, but there's no way he went in any other direction when he brought Roxas here."

Lexaeus took the first step onto the constantly-shifting bridge of floating platforms, slowly making his way across. Zexion and Vexen followed, with Marluxia once again coming in at the end of the line. Within a few minutes of carefully-balanced walking, the group reached the other side of the chasm and stood just a few yards in front of the gigantic white orb, easily dwarfing the buildings they had seen earlier. They walked around the structure for a few minutes, poking at its outer wall in an attempt to find any sort of button or latch that would open up a passage to its inner sanctum; unfortunately, however, there seemed to be no way in from the outside.

"Roxas is clearly inside here," Vexen muttered, raising one of his hands to touch the curved wall of the sphere. "Somewhere on the opposite side from our current location, to be exact. But how do we go about getting inside?"

"No illusions involved here," Zexion said, closing his book. "There truly doesn't appear to be any sort of entrance to the Internet's core."

"In that case," Lexaeus said, removing his weapon from his shoulder and holding it out in front of him, "We are left with only one option... we shall _make _an entrance."

He turned to Marluxia for a second, and the pink-haired man nodded in response before holding out his own weapon. Zexion and Vexen backed off, the older of the two men readying his shield in preparation for the blast that both of them knew was coming. For a few seconds, Lexaeus and Marluxia both built up powerful auras of elemental energy around their bodies; this energy then rushed outward and surrounded their weapons, causing Lexaeus' axe to glow red and Marluxia's scythe to be surrounded in jagged-edged swirls of pink. The two simultaneously raised their weapons and then swung forward with all their might, causing the energy infused into them to explode outward and sending fragments of the sphere's strange, rubbery material flying everywhere.

When the smoke cleared, Marluxia and Lexaeus were standing before a hole large enough to drive the Dimensional Hippievan through, the edges almost appearing to be dripping slightly as if the energy of their attacks had melted the strange material. Within a few seconds, however, the stuff hardened again and gradually began to grow outward, filling in the gap left behind. Marluxia and Lexaeus quickly dashed through the hole before it was too small for them to enter, calling back to the other two members from inside.

"Quick," Marluxia said, "The wall's growing back!"

Vexen immediately ran through the hole just before it grew too small for his height and the bulk of his shield to make it through, followed shortly afterward by Zexion. Seconds after the smallest of the group made it through, the hole had shrunk down so much that even someone as tiny as Naminé would have had difficulty squeezing through it; not long after that, it was almost entirely gone, making a disgusting squelching sound as the circle of semi-solid white material compressed together and completely sealed the hole.

"That was close," Zexion said, glancing back at the perfectly-smooth wall where their makeshift entrance had been just seconds before. "Let's hope it's going to be easier to get out of here than it was to get in."

"Roxas," Lexaeus said, catching the attention of the other three men immediately. He pointed over toward the wall on the other side, where the black-cloaked boy was hanging from the wall with his arms in what appeared to be shackles made from the same material as the rest of the sphere. "He doesn't appear to be conscious... but he is indeed here."

"Good," Vexen said, taking a few steps in the boy's direction. "Now, let's release him and get out of here before any Fangirls rear their ugly heads."

A chorus of creepy giggles informed them that it was already too late for that. On the wall where Roxas was being held, four rectangular doors slid open and a single Fangirl emerged from each one. As the creatures walked across the floor toward the Organization members, it became clear that these were no ordinary Fangirls-_-_their faces were more human-like in appearance, and they were taller and more anatomically-correct than the flat-chested, long-armed monsters that the Organization was used to wiping out by the hundreds. One of them was notably taller than the rest, and held a spear-like weapon with a heavy-looking drill-shaped point on the end; the smallest of the group wore glasses and held what appeared to be a sketchbook under one arm, and another had long, unkempt-looking purplish hair and appeared to be clutching a pink-furred plush pony. The fourth and final member of the group wore a Japanese schoolgirl uniform along with a belt with a variety of odd objects tucked into it, including several different guns and strange, brightly-colored magic wands.

"I suppose one of you must be the Fangirl Queen," Vexen said, stepping forward with his shield at the ready. "Let me guess... it's the one with the stuffed pony, isn't it?"

The four just giggled in response at first; a few seconds later, the one with the utility belt grinned and waved one finger at Vexen.

"Nuh-uh," she said, "The Queen's not here right now."

"That's right," the bigger Fangirl said, slamming the floor with the blunt end of her weapon. "She's busy... and _we're _in charge while she's out."

"What business do you have with her, anyway?", the one with the sketchpad said. "She wouldn't look twice at a creepy old man like you."

The one carrying the stuffed pony just giggled, sitting down on the floor and playing with the toy as if not even paying attention to the conversation at all.

"We're here for Roxas," Lexaeus said, taking a step toward the four and readying his weapon. "Number Thirteen of our Organization. Hand him over and we may consider letting the four of you live."

This caused the Fangirls to burst out laughing; three of them sounded fairly normal (ignoring their squeaky, distorted voices), while the one with the pony actually seemed to be repeating the syllable "lol" over and over instead of producing actual laughter. Once they got over this sudden outburst, each of the four's eyes glowed red for a second as they seemed to prepare for battle; the one with the pony just stood up and grinned evilly, while the one carrying the sketchbook flipped it open and shifted several of its fingers on the other hand into something resembling pencils. The large one with the drill-like spear shifted its feet slightly and clutched its weapon with both hands before pointing it forward, and finally the last of the creatures drew two identical guns from its belt and spun them on its long, claw-like fingers.

"Well then," Marluxia said, readying his scythe and shifting into a battle stance. "It looks like we're not going to be getting Roxas out of this place without a fight after all."


	25. The Center of the Internet

**CHAPTER 24**  
_~ The Center of the Internet ~_

In the center of the Internet itself, four black-cloaked men faced off against the four most powerful Fangirls aside from the Queen herself, their weapons glinting in the strange white light that radiated from all directions inside the core. The four Fangirls readied their weapons (or, at least, what passed for weapons in their twisted minds) as well, then each of them stepped forward one by one to introduce themselves.

"Nitsugi Sousaku!", the one wearing the school uniform shouted, twirling her twin pistols on one finger each for a few seconds before striking a pose and pointing them in the direction of the Organization members. "Fastest shot in all the Internet!"

"I am Ekaki Kurui," the one with the glasses said, flipping open her sketchbook and rapidly scribbling away at a page with her pencil-claws. "She who brings dreams and nightmares to life."

"Nama Ryokouki," the largest of the four said, spinning around with its drill-like weapon for a few moments before pointing it forward and causing the drillbit on the end to spin rapidly. "The almighty drill that shall pierce all things!"

"And I'm Tenkyou Shikeiro!", the unarmed Fangirl said, hugging her plush pony tightly before baring her disturbingly sharp teeth and giggling. While the others seemed to be attempting to come up with impressive-sounding titles for themselves at the last minute, this one clearly had no interest in such things. "I can do whatever I want! Hee hee!"

Immediately, the rest of the group turned toward Tenkyou and glared at her, which got no reaction out of the purple-haired Fangirl aside from yet another deranged giggle.

"Damn it, Shikeiro," Nama said, stomping the ground and shaking one fist in the other Fangirl's direction. "You're supposed to come up with a title like us!"

"But I don't wanna. Titles are lame, _noobs!_"

Ekaki's previously calm demeanor suddenly vanished as her eyes flashed red and she turned toward Tenkyou with a snarl, raising her pencil-claws as if preparing to strike.

"Why you little-_-_"

"Cool it, you guys," Nitsugi said, stepping between the two and pointing one gun each at the two argumentative Fangirls. "You keep this up and those guys'll snatch away that kid right from under our noses! You think the Queen's gonna be happy with us if _that _happens?"

This finally seemed to get through to the purple-haired Fangirl, whose eyes widened for a second as she whimpered a bit in fear.

"Nope... can't let those noobs grab the Queen's toy."

"Then come on," Nama said, activating her drill-tipped weapon and turning back toward the Organization members, who were currently standing nearby with confused looks on their faces. "Let's smash 'em. We've got 'em outnumbered, after all!"

Vexen's eye twitched as he glanced around to the two sides; apparently, this Fangirl either wasn't able to count or was not entirely aware of what the term "outnumbered" meant. Still, it appeared that they were finally ready to attack now that their little argument was finished, so he braced himself for battle, not sure what the four were capable of but expecting the worst.

"There's four of us and four of them," Lexaeus said, glancing across the lineup of Fangirls, "So I say we split up and each take on one at a time. Sound good to you?"

The other three nodded, then took a hard look at the four Fangirls and quickly decided which of the four they would target. Zexion glanced at the four Fangirls and compared the titles which they had so conveniently provided for him; if the one named Ekaki Kurui had the sort of powers he expected that she might have based on her description of herself, she would most likely also be the weakest physically and thus the closest match for his own abilities. He opened his lexicon and quickly walked in her direction, beginning to charge up a swirl of blue-black energy in his other hand as he went, but before he was able to get too close he was suddenly knocked halfway across the room by what he only saw as a purple blur, dropping his book upon landing and skidding across the floor for several feet before coming to a stop.

"Zexion!"

Lexaeus turned to see what had happened to his longtime friend, but before he was able to do anything about it, suddenly the room around him went dark and he could see nothing beyond the space ten feet in front of him. His fellow Organization members had vanished, as had the Fangirls, though within a few moments the quiet voice of the one who had called herself Ekaki Kurui chimed in through the cloak of shadows.

"Don't worry about those friends of yours," she said, speaking from somewhere beyond the large man's vision. "They're all in good hands. Now... let's see if you're any smarter than you look."

In an instant, Lexaeus' surroundings shifted from pure blackness to what appeared to be a dark room in an old, dilapidated house. At first, he seemed to be alone in the room, but before long the silence was broken by the sounds of rattling windows and doors all around him; _something _was trying to break into the place where he was trapped. He just stood and waited calmly, weapon at the ready, for one of the entrances to break open and reveal the cause of the noise. Before long, his answer came, as a huge furry creature that resembled the typical horror-movie werewolf smashed the door to splinters and lunged at him. He stepped aside, avoiding its attack effortlessly, and then backhanded the beast, sending it flying across the room and crashing into an old table in the corner.

"Hmm," he said, addressing the voice of the mysterious Fangirl despite the fact that he could not see her anywhere, "You're going to have to do better than that."

* * *

Zexion pulled himself to his feet, realizing that he had been thrown a great distance but had not been seriously harmed in the process; he dematerialized his book from the place it had landed and then quickly summoned it back to his hand, then glanced around to see which of his opponents had surprised him. A giggle from behind him made him spin around as quickly as he could, jumping backward in the process and narrowly avoiding a punch from the Fangirl that had called itself Tenkyou Shikeiro.

"Oh no," she said, grinning evilly and licking her lips. "Looks like you're fighting me... hee hee."

"So it would seem," he answered, flipping open his book and getting back to what he had started before he had been unexpectedly sent flying. "I suppose you're smarter than you let on... throwing me aside before I could enter battle with the Fangirl I would have the best chance against."

The purple-haired freak just laughed in response, once again repeatedly saying something that sounded like "lol" over and over rather than actually laughing. When she had finished, she turned toward Zexion and replied.

"Nope! I just like you better than those other guys, that's all. I think it's the hair, hee hee... gotta have blue hair!"

The blue-haired man barely dodged another attack, then caused several pages of his lexicon to tear free and shift shape into snake-like creatures which flew toward the Fangirl and attempted to bite down on her. Rather than even attempting to dodge them, however, she just smiled and caused a strange purplish aura to surround her body, causing them to transform into what appeared to be snake-shaped wool scarves and become utterly harmless. Tenkyou swooped down and grabbed the scarves, putting them on and skipping about happily for a few seconds before charging at Zexion once again and tackling him to the ground.

"Thanks for the presents!", she said, grinning and revealing her sharp fangs to Zexion once again. "Now I'm gonna give _you _something, too!"

Zexion's eyes widened as the Fangirl's mouth descended toward his face, attempting to break free of her hold but finding that she was far stronger than she appeared. Just when it seemed that she was about to do something absolutely disturbing, an explosion of pink light from the other side of the room distracted her, allowing him to finally shove her off of his chest and roll out of the way to safety. Tenkyou didn't even seem to notice she had been pushed aside, lying on the ground in the exact same position she had fallen and staring up at the pink flashes on the other side of the room. While she was distracted, the blue-haired scholar once again attacked, this time conjuring up a swarm of purple-hued energy balls that came crashing down onto her from above like meteors. She turned just in time to see the first of them speeding toward her face, letting out a squeal as the meteorites of energy slammed into her, causing an explosion of blue-and-purple light that briefly illuminated the whole room.

"Finally," Zexion said, lowering his hand and pausing to catch his breath for a moment while the fog of purplish energy cleared away. "She wasn't expecting that... let's hope it worked."

* * *

Marluxia flew backward as his own shockwave of reddish-pink energy clashed against the barrage of glowing, star-like bullets from his opponent's twin revolvers, causing a massive explosion that could almost certainly be seen from clear across the room. He caught himself before falling flat on his back, hopping back to his feet and preparing for the next assault that was surely going to come as soon as the light from that explosion cleared. He took those precious few moments to plan out his next attack, desperately trying to figure out some way around Nitsugi's rapid-fire shots; there had to be some sort of pattern to the attacks that he could exploit to evade them, but as of yet they had come at him far too quickly for him to figure any such thing out.

As the shape of the tall, sailor-suited Fangirl became visible through the smoke from the clearing explosion, he lunged forward and surrounded his entire body with an aura of dark energy, swirling with pink around the edges. He sunk below the surface of the floor and then charged, spinning toward his opponent with his scythe like a buzzsaw at full speed in hopes that such an attack coming from below would catch her off guard.

For a second, it almost did; then, just as the patch of dark pinkish-red energy and the whirling scythe came into the Fangirl's vision, she jumped high into the air and fired both of her guns straight down. Marluxia changed his path in an attempt to avoid them, but the blasts seemed to lock on to his position and before long he had been knocked back up to the surface, his scythe slipping from his grip and clattering on the ground nearby.

"Oh, you're disarmed now," she said, noticing that the pink-haired man and his weapon had been separated. "Well, that's no fun. Pick it up and we'll start again."

Marluxia stood up, brushing some dust off of his cloak and noticing that it now had several small holes burned through it from the impact of those last few shots. He glanced at his fallen scythe and then at the Fangirl, wondering for a moment if she really would wait for him to retrieve it before attacking again; he took a step toward the scythe's place on the floor, then suddenly turned and held out his hand in Nitsugi's direction, sending a flurry of sakura petals spiraling out toward her. She backed away, but the petals just spread out further, tracking her down relentlessly. Just when it seemed she was about to be hit at full force by the flurry of surprisingly-deadly plant matter, she spun her guns once and then began firing away at full speed, shooting down each and every one of the petals before it could get within three feet of her. Marluxia gasped; it was quickly becoming clear that she had been holding back on him the whole time.

"So... is that all you can do, then?", he asked, ignoring his fallen scythe for the moment in an attempt to get a bit more information on the Fangirl's abilities. "Just shooting increasingly fast bursts of energy like that?"

"Oh, no," she said, putting her guns back into her belt and drawing two different magic wands instead. "I can do all kinds of stuff... watch this! _Refraction Donut!_"

She waved one of the wands in his direction, sending a spray of what appeared to be rainbow-colored rings of energy flying toward him. He dashed to the side of the barrage and called his scythe back to his hand, figuring that it would at least make it easier to block a few more of these attacks than he could deal with unarmed.

"Oh, and there's this, too! _Two-World Alignment!_"

She swung the other wand at him and a dozen blasts shaped vaguely like the planet Saturn launched out in his direction, their rings rotating rapidly around them as they flew. Marluxia deflected one with his scythe, leaping out of the way before the rest could reach him and watching as they collided with the floor behind him and created yet another explosion that left melted pools of rubbery Internet-material in its wake.

"And now... my ultimate attack! Super Ultima Magnum Cannon... _Blast!_"

Nitsugi put away both of the wands and pulled out something resembling a bazooka, which most certainly had _not_ been present on her belt just seconds before. Pale greenish energy charged in its barrel for a few seconds and then she let loose just like she had with her two guns before, sending hundreds of what appeared to be neon-green cannonballs of light flying across the room in Marluxia's direction. He tried to dodge past them in an attempt to reach their source, still trying to discern some sort of pattern to the way she fired them, but before long their speed became too much for him and one of the projectiles slammed into his chest, sending him flying backward as it exploded with incredible force. His cloak was almost immediately shredded apart, and he crashed to the ground on the other side of the room, sailing past Vexen as he went.

* * *

"What in the name of-_-_"

Vexen glanced to his side just in time to see Marluxia go flying past in a trail of smoke and sparks of greenish energy, his cloak in tatters flapping behind him as he went. During this brief moment, the Fangirl that called herself Nama lunged in and punched him square in the face with one of her massive fists, which had actually grown to three times its usual size upon impact. The old scientist cried out in pain and flew backward, smashing to the ground in a heap but managing to hang on to his shield.

He cursed under his breath as he stood back up, rubbing his face with his free hand and spitting a bit of blood out onto the ground in front of him; he was surprised that he hadn't lost any teeth after being hit by such a powerful blow. The Fangirl laughed slightly at the sight of him, taking a few slow steps in his direction and preparing for another attack.

"You're a strong one," Vexen said, raising his shield to deflect another crushing blow and shaking a bit from the impact. "But no matter how hard you hit, this shield will not give way."

He blocked another attack, then backed off a bit and thrust his other hand forward, freezing both of the Fangirl's feet to the floor. When she looked down to see why her legs refused to move, he lunged in for an attack of his own, smashing Nama in the face with his shield as hard as he could. Her head turned slightly, pushed aside by the force of the blow, but other than that she showed no reaction to the attack at all. Before Vexen could make another move, one of her feet suddenly smashed through the ice and into his gut, sending him flying backward once again.

"Well, in that case," he said, groaning slightly as he pulled himself back to his feet, "I'll just have to freeze a bit more of you next time. I suppose it won't be quite so easy to break out then, will it?"

Pale blue energy and icy winds swirled into existence around his hand for a few seconds as Nama plodded toward him, this time readying her drill-tipped spear instead of going for an unarmed attack. Just as she threatened to come within reach of him, he knelt down and slammed his palm into the ground, causing a trail of ice to rapidly creep toward her and imprisoning her within a hexagonal prison of ice. It was the same technique he had used against Ignis, one which he had perfected less than a month previously; it was specifically developed not only to freeze its victim in place, but to rapidly drop them out of consciousness and sap away as much of their strength as possible. About ten seconds passed with no sign of movement from within the ice pillar, and Vexen smiled.

"All that strength of yours will do you no good now," he said, taking a step toward the frozen Fangirl and raising his shield in preparation for a finishing blow. Ice began to collect on the spiked edge of the weapon, gradually extending the five smaller spikes into one massive one that resembled a sword of solid ice.

"Hmph... why am I even bothering to talk to you now? Surely you're too far gone to hear me. Now, say goodbye to your sorry excuse for an existence, Fangirl."

Just as Vexen's icy blade was nearly complete, the pillar of ice Nama had been trapped inside suddenly cracked right down the middle, with smaller cracks spreading outward from the first until the entire structure was barely holding together. His eyes went wide for a second as he spotted a pinkish-orange glow from the center of the pillar, which quickly exploded outward and sent chunks of half-melting ice flying everywhere. Before he could slam the ice-sword down on her, Nama thrust her own weapon upward at an angle and activated the drill, piercing through the blade of ice and shattering it in an instant.

"Heh heh... you should've known better," she said, shaking off the last traces of ice from her body and taking a step out of the icy patch on the floor and toward her opponent. "There's no way some silly pyrotechnic freezing thing is gonna stop _me!_"

Vexen's eye twitched.

"I suspect you mean _cryogenic_ freezing," he said, backing away slightly. "And in any case, that would not be the correct term... I never had any intention on unfreezing you alive."

* * *

Lexaeus cleaved through another dozen zombies as more and more of the undead monstrosities crawled in through the nearest window, threatening to fill the entire room if he wasn't able to do anything to stop them soon. Another werewolf lunged at him from the open door and landed on his back, but he threw the creature off with a shrug and swung it through the window, knocking several of the approaching zombies out along with it.

"Oh, poor Lexaeus," Ekaki's voice said, seemingly moving around the perimeter of the room as she spoke. "You really have no idea what's going on here, do you?"

He just shook his head in response, effortlessly bisecting a trio of hissing vampires with a single swing and then flinging a small boulder into the window to block it off and stem the flow of zombies. It was clear to him that the way this Fangirl's power worked was much like Zexion's; he had become trapped within her illusions, and none of what he was seeing now was truly real. It was lucky for him that she seemed to be incapable of creating any illusory monsters that were actually capable of putting up a fight against him, though he suspected that this might have been due to the fact that he had been holding back most of his strength throughout the fight, only putting forth the bare minimum of effort required to crush the horror-movie rejects that ceaselessly attacked him.

"I wouldn't be so sure of that," he said, launching another werewolf out the door from whence it came with a barrage of rocks. "I happen to have a friend with illusion powers much like yours."

For a split-second, the illusion of the haunted house seemed to waver a bit; Lexaeus spotted Ekaki standing just outside the one corner of the room where no monsters ever seemed to spawn, rapidly flipping back and forth in her sketchbook. In the moment she had become visible through the shadows, her eyes glowed red and her usually-calm face twisted into a snarl.

"My powers are not mere _illusions, _you fool," she blurted out, her voice seeming to come from the same place he had last seen her this time rather than moving about as she spoke. "I will not stand for such baseless accusations!"

Suddenly, the room grew even darker, to the point where Lexaeus could hardly see a thing. He could hear more monsters approaching from all directions-_-_or, more accurately, all directions except for one. He raised his hand in the air and summoned a boulder the size of his entire chest, then suddenly flung it at that corner of the building where Ekaki had been standing during the brief moment where her images flickered out. He heard a yelp from the other side, followed by a crash as the rock smashed into the floor; he had missed, but not by much. Lexaeus then clenched his fists tightly, swinging his weapon downward into the wooden floor of the phantom house as he released a massive shockwave of reddish energy from his entire body.

In an instant, the entire house was shredded apart, monsters and all; as Ekaki's illusions were overpowered and dispelled by the sheer force of Lexaeus' shockwave, the sphere of all-encompassing darkness around him soon gave way to the bright light of the Internet's core, and the giant could once again see the entire room clearly.

He paused for a moment, breathing heavily, and glanced around to see that he was not the only Organization member having difficulty; Marluxia seemed to have lost his cloak and most of the shirt underneath to the attacks of the Fangirl named Nitsugi Sousaku, while Vexen was struggling to block a series of powerful blows from the larger Fangirl that had called itself Nama Ryokouki. Zexion, too, wasn't having much luck-_-_though his purple-haired Fangirl opponent seemed to be a bit more disheveled-looking than before, it was clear that she had a strange answer for almost everything he tried to throw at her. Currently, she seemed to be going on and on about ponies in a high-pitched squeal of a voice, which for some reason had caused Zexion to run in fear as she chased him down with the pink-furred stuffed toy held tightly in her outstretched hands.

The blue-haired man soon came to Lexaeus' side, which caused his pursuing Fangirl to back off a bit. Marluxia was sent flying by another barrage of star-shaped projectiles from one of Nitsugi's guns, landing not far away from the two; Vexen was the only one who remained locked in combat with his respective Fangirl, blocking several strikes from Nama's spear as she repeatedly lunged at him. Before long, however, it was clear that this couldn't go on much longer; while Vexen's shield normally seemed all but indestructible, it was now rapidly accumulating scratches and dings of all different sizes.

"Heh... get ready," Nama said, smiling at Vexen and raising her drill to the sky while it began to spin even more rapidly than before. This time, it became surrounded by swirls of pink and orange energy as it spun, rapidly absorbing their power and growing to incredible size in the process. "That puny shield of yours can't hold up much longer... especially not against _this!_"

Vexen backed away and braced himself as he prepared to block the massive drill, confident that nothing out of the ordinary would happen; at best, the attack would send him flying backward from sheer force and his shield would be unharmed. Unfortunately for him, that was not at all what happened; as the nearly car-sized drill ground into the outer surface of his shield, the blue metal cracked and then snapped clean in half, both halves of the weapon yanked out of Vexen's grip instantly and sent flying back along with their wielder. He slammed down into the floor and skidded to a stop not far from where the other three were now standing, groaning in pain for a few seconds before realizing what had just happened.

"No... that's impossible," he muttered, eyes widening with fear. He quickly dematerialized the broken halves of his shield and called forth a new copy of the weapon, but this did nothing to lessen the impact of what had happened; before this point, he had truly believed that no attack would ever break his shield.

The four Fangirls giggled as they approached from their scattered positions across the room, closing in on the group of four worn-out Organization members.

"I've been analyzing the Fangirls' abilities," Zexion said, catching the attention of the other three immediately. "Since before the fight even began, when they gave their introductions... I was able to predict their powers with some accuracy even then, though that purple-haired one seems to be a bit of a wildcard."

"Go on," Vexen said, glancing to the approaching Fangirls impatiently before returning his attention to his blue-haired comrade.

"I believe we should be able to handle them," he said, beginning to explain his plan. "We only need to switch places and confront the Fangirl most suited to our own abilities."

He turned for a moment, seeing that the Fangirls were still barely outside of hearing distance; he had to go over this quickly.

"Nama Ryokouki relies entirely on overwhelming power... Lexaeus, you should be able to outmatch her on that front. And Vexen, you go for Nitsugi Sousaku-_-_that shield of yours should have no difficulty deflecting her shots, no matter how many of them she may fire."

The two nodded, stepping forward and preparing to enter battle with the two Fangirls.

"And Ekaki Kurui, of course... her power is illusion-based much like mine, so I will handle her."

He turned to Marluxia, who had realized where that left him in the battle and was looking understandably worried; Zexion just sighed.

"As for Tenkyou Shikeiro... I don't know what to say. I'm sorry, Marluxia, but I guess you're stuck with her."

The pink-haired man frowned slightly, but then nodded and joined Vexen and Lexaeus at the front lines, preparing to head back into battle against the strange Fangirl whose powers not even Zexion had been able to figure out. Seconds later, Zexion himself stepped forward, approaching the small glasses-wearing Fangirl who had previously trapped Lexaeus in her illusions.

"We've decided to change things around a bit," he said, waving one hand through the air in Ekaki's direction while flipping through the pages of his book rapidly. "Hope you don't mind."

* * *

Lexaeus charged forward, clashing his axe blade against the shaft of Nama's spear and driving her backward with the sudden force. Once she had been sufficiently separated from the rest of the group, he backed off a bit and awaited a counterattack; instead, she just blurted out the first thing that came to her Fangirlish mind.

"You're a big boy, huh?", she said, cocking her head to the side and clutching her spear in both hands. "Must be pretty strong, too... that reminds me of a saying I heard."

"And that would be?"

"I'm sure you've heard it," she said. "You know, the one about what happens when you use an unstoppable force against an immovable object?"

Lexaeus sighed.

"That's more a _question _than a saying," he said, raising his tomahawk and gradually building up his energy in preparation for an attack. "And besides, it's completely irrelevant to our situation."

"_Irrevelant,_ huh? You must be even dumber than you look," she said, spinning her drill and once again rapidly charging it with power. "Didn't you see what happened to that _unbreakable_ shield your friend had? _Nothing _can stop me!"

The two simultaneously charged their weapons with incredible amounts of power, the blade of Lexaeus' axe becoming covered with a shell of solid gray stone that enlarged it to several times its usual size and Nama's drill expanding just like it had when she had attacked Vexen. Lexaeus raised his stone-encased weapon high above his head, gripping the handle with both hands, and then spoke, quite calmly considering the situation.

"First of all, there's no such thing as an unstoppable force."

He then swung his weapon down faster than his opponent could react, instantly crushing her beneath its weight and cleaving a massive gash down the center of the white room's floor. There was an explosion of Fangirlish energy and a shower of computer code, and for a few moments afterward, the entire Internet seemed to shake; throughout several cities in Australia, hundreds of households suddenly found that their Internet connections had inexplicably dropped off and their phone lines had no dial tone. Several websites shut down as the resulting shockwave traveled across the expanse and threatened to capsize their metallic structures and send them tumbling into the abyss; the sudden and unexplained worldwide outbreak of Internet problems would remain a front-page story in the newspapers for days to come, though none ever suspected their true cause.

"And furthermore," Lexaeus continued, though his enemy was no longer present to hear him, "You are most certainly _not_ an immovable object."

* * *

Vexen stepped out in front of Nitsugi, raising his shield and motioning for her to go ahead and attack. She drew her two guns like she had at the beginning of her battle with Marluxia, spinning them on her fingers for a few seconds and then smiling. She watched the old scientist gradually walk toward her, readying his shield for an attack, and was immediately convinced that he didn't have a chance against the speed of her shots-_-_she had expected a faster opponent, after it became clear that Marluxia was not able to keep up with her, but instead it seemed that they had sent someone even slower than he had been.

"Heh... I'm not even going to have to _try _this time," she snickered, aiming a single gun in Vexen's direction and firing rapidly. He pulled his shield in front of him just in time to block every last one of the attacks, which caused the Fangirl's eyes to widen slightly; maybe this wouldn't be so easy after all.

"Oh, so you're gonna try and block my attacks with that thing, then? Heh... that can't last forever, you know!"

She blasted away with both of her revolvers at once, sending hundreds of star-shaped pink bursts speeding toward Vexen so quickly that they were barely visible as more than streaks of color passing through the air. The sound of many small impacts on Vexen's shield echoed throughout the room, but Vexen was not deterred; he simply continued to walk forward, his shield held out in front of him. When Nitsugi noticed that her attacks didn't seem to be putting a dent in his shield, she tossed her current weapons up into the air and drew the two magic wands, attaching them to the top of the guns as they came spinning back down and then snatching both fused weapons out of the air.

"So your shield can handle a few little blasts," she said, building up power in each of the strange-looking combined weapons. "So what? Let's see it take a few hits from this... my _Two-World Rainbow Revolver!_"

Once again she resumed her incredible barrage of energy blasts, though this time they were quite a bit larger and had changed shape. Rather than simple pink starbursts, they now resembled planets with spinning rainbow-colored rings, hurtling through the air with several of the smaller pink bolts swirling around them and forming a second set of rings. Vexen picked up his pace a bit and plowed through these blasts just like he had done with the previous ones, though he found himself pushed back a bit by each of the attacks that managed to hit him; fortunately, it seemed that his opponent wasn't really aiming her attacks at all, relying on the sheer number of the blasts to ensure that at least some of them managed to hit their mark. He began to weave back and forth among the blasts, dodging a few and blocking the rest with his shield, using the flashes of light and smoke from the explosions to disguise his location as he moved ever forward. Before long, he was standing within an arm's length of his Fangirl opponent; she briefly stopped shooting to let the smoke clear, but the only thing she saw was Vexen's fist flying toward her face.

"Gyaaah!"

Nitsugi was sent crashing to the floor several feet away, her combined weapons slipping out of her hands and splitting back up into their component parts as they bounced against the floor. Vexen laughed, taking a few steps toward her and smacking her in the face with his shield as she attempted to stand up.

"You didn't even notice, you fool," he said, standing tall in front of his dazed opponent. "Just firing away madly, not even pausing to make sure if you were actually hitting me at all... I barely even had to make an effort to reach you."

Nitsugi finally struggled to her feet, pulling her bazooka-like weapon out of nowhere and beginning to charge up a sphere of explosive green energy in its barrel.

"Don't think you've won just yet," she said, aiming the weapon directly at the old scientist. "After all... you still haven't seen my ultimate attack!"

* * *

Ekaki just watched from her safe corner on the outside of the dark house her powers had created, smiling as Zexion seemed to be completely fooled by her technique. Rather than standing and fighting like Lexaeus had done, he seemed to be absolutely terrified by the approaching monsters, only occasionally lashing out at one of them but usually just running away. She did have to work a bit harder to maintain the structure of the illusion, since the blue-haired man had run out into the hallways rather than holding his position in the room where he had started, but as far as she could tell he was not making any effort to escape.

"Poor little Zexion," she said, adding an exaggerated empathetic tone to her voice. "You'd better not slow down, or the big, bad monsters will get you!"

She then laughed, her eyes glowing red for a few seconds before she finally stopped, calming down once again and going back to observing her opponent's actions.

"Ooh, careful there," she called, watching as Zexion smacked a vampire in the face with his book just in time to avoid its bite. "That one almost had you!"

Inside the illusion-world's haunted house, Zexion ran down another hallway, suddenly skidding to a stop as he noticed that three more vampires had cut him off at the other end. He jumped into a nearby door and slammed it shut behind him, quickly locking it and then pushing several pieces of old furniture in front of the entrance in hopes that it would block out the monsters for at least a little while. The door rattled, but did not open; the blue-haired man breathed a sigh of relief and sat down in a recliner over in the corner of the room, flipping open his book and attempting to conjure up something using his own power over illusions. Oddly, however, he found that nothing happened no matter how much of his energy he pumped into the illusion.

"Nuh-uh," Ekaki said, adjusting her glasses and smiling. "Silly boy... that won't work, not as long as _I'm _in control here. Hee hee hee..."

She briefly glanced across the room, noticing that Nama had already been destroyed; fortunately, her opponent seemed to have no interest in getting involved with the other members' fights, just standing quietly with his arms crossed and watching as the other battles continued to rage. Nitsugi had brought out her ultimate weapon and was ready to fire it at Vexen, while Tenkyou and Marluxia simply stood and stared at each other, neither of them having made a move just yet.

"Good... no interruptions," she mumbled to herself, flipping to another page of her sketchbook and rapidly scrabbling at it with her pencil-tipped fingers. "Now... time to turn up the heat on Little Boy Blue here... hee hee."

* * *

_"She hasn't made a single move,"_ Marluxia thought, staring at the strange Fangirl as she just sat on the floor and petted her stuffed pony. _"It's almost like she's not even paying attention to me..."_

He stood in place for several seconds more, then decided to move in for his first attack; he couldn't just stand around waiting for his opponent to make the first move forever. Lunging at the purple-haired Fangirl, he swung his scythe in a wide arc, causing her to suddenly become aware of his presence and leap up onto the flat edge of the weapon's blade, springing off of it and kicking him in the face.

"Gotcha!", she blurted out, grinning evilly. "You just got _trolled!_"

Marluxia shook his head slightly and stood up, rubbing his nose where he had taken the brunt of the Fangirl's attack. He readied his scythe once again, not sure what the Fangirl was up to but fairly confident in his assumption that she was going to start attacking soon.

"You know, I'm not too familiar with Internet slang... but I'm pretty sure that word doesn't mean what you think it means."

The Fangirl's eyes glowed red and she bared her teeth at him, apparently taking the implication that she had misused an Internet-slang term as an insult. A split-second later she jumped at him, lashing out with both of her clawed hands but narrowly missing as Marluxia jumped to the side and countered with another slash of his scythe. Once again, Tenkyou avoided the attack, this time bending backward in a way that should have been physically impossible, not stopping until she was parallel to the floor and then springing back up the moment the scythe was no longer above her.

When she came up, she was surprised to find that Marluxia was nowhere to be seen, glancing around rapidly for any sign of the pink-haired man. Finally, she felt a tap on her shoulder from behind and spun around to see him standing there, scythe held behind his back. She immediately lashed out at him with an elbow, striking him in the face once again and sending him staggering back from the force of the attack.

"Pretty strong for a Fangirl," he said, rubbing the sore spot on his face. "I'm going to have to be a little more careful with you from now on."

He rapidly swung at the Fangirl several times in a row, sending a series of cutting energy-waves in her direction. She managed to twist herself around to avoid the first two, but the third hit home, slicing into her side and causing a shower of greenish sparks to burst out in place of blood. She snarled at him, then clutched her stuffed pony tightly and holding it out in front of her.

"I know what I'm gonna do with you," she said, her eyes beginning to glow red once again. "Nice, fluffy pink hair... you're gonna make a _pretty _pony!"

Marluxia backed away a bit, but not quickly enough; a beam of rainbow-colored energy jumped forward from the stuffed toy and slammed into his chest, spreading out and surrounding his entire body almost instantly. He attempted to shake off the attack and slash at Tenkyou with his scythe, but found himself completely unable to move; within a few seconds, he suddenly felt heavier, as if something was pushing him to the floor and forcing him to walk on all fours. For a few brief moments, he slipped in and out of consciousness; when he awakened, he immediately noticed that something was different about his perception of the world around him, though he couldn't quite pinpoint what it was. When he glanced down at his feet, however, the difference became obvious-_-_he had apparently been transformed into what appeared to be a pink-furred horse.

Tenkyou rolled on the floor laughing like a maniac, causing disturbing "lol" sounds to echo all throughout the room. Where there had previously been a tall, pink-haired human wielding a scythe, there was now a horse-like creature with shaggy pink fur and what appeared to be a tattoo of the Roman numeral "XI" on his hip. The Fangirl glanced up at the Marluxia-horse's face for a moment and then realized that he was not a horse but a unicorn-_-_in place of a horn, however, was a large pink blade resembling that of his scythe, which was no longer present.

Marluxia opened his mouth to say something, but what came out didn't sound a thing like English as he knew it; unsurprisingly, his vocal cords has been altered just as much as the rest of his body. This caused the Fangirl to burst out laughing once again, though before long she calmed down and rushed to the side of the pink, fluffy scythicorn to see if his hair really was as soft and fluffy as it appeared. He silently groaned as his opponent ruffled his mane and then climbed up onto his back, and then finally decided to fight back. Immediately he started bucking wildly, threatening to throw the Fangirl off; fortunately, his strength did not appear to be affected by this transformation, and within seconds she was sent flying forward over his head and slamming face-first into the floor nearby.

"Ouchies," she grumbled, picking herself back up and shaking her head slightly in Marluxia's direction. "You are _not_ a nice pony."

* * *

"Oh dear," Ekaki said, looking into her illusory haunted house and seeing that the new-and-improved monsters had smashed through the barricade and were now closing in on Zexion. "Looks like time's run out for you... too bad, this was just starting to get interesting!"

The blue-haired man stood up and clobbered several zombies with his book, knocking them around but not managing to damage them seriously enough to stop them. The undead legions slowly managed to push him up against the wall, no matter how hard he fought; within a few minutes, he was covered by them, disappearing from view entirely. Ekaki watched as the zombies and other movie monsters piled on, eventually filling up the entire room now that they had nothing standing in their way. She grinned and flipped to the next page in her sketchbook, quickly drawing what appeared to be a cartoonish image of a dead Zexion with X'ed-out eyes before she was interrupted by an unexpected voice from behind her back.

"No, you've got it all wrong."

She spun around, expecting to find the source of the voice there, but instead she saw nothing; just the massive white room and the other battles still taking place. Again the voice spoke to her seemingly from nowhere, and she glanced around furiously in an attempt to figure out just where it was coming from, with little success.

"You see... my hair is _blue. _And it hangs down on the opposite side from what you have there, by the way."

"Zexion?", she blurted out, standing up from where she had been sitting and turning her head rapidly in an attempt to track down her opponent. "But... but you were just in there! How did you..."

Finally, the cloaked man appeared, holding his open book with one hand while the other was raised in the Fangirl's direction. She flipped to another page of her own book and hurriedly scribbled in another monster to send after him, but no matter how hard she tried she found that her powers seemed to be having no effect.

"In case you haven't figured it out yet," Zexion said, lowering his hand slightly but still keeping his powers concentrated on what he was doing, "Just look behind you."

Ekaki turned and found her previous illusion, the dark zone containing the haunted house, was still hovering in the air behind her, despite the fact that she was no longer focusing any of her power on maintaining that particular image. With a snap of his fingers, Zexion caused the illusion to vanish instantly, leaving no trace behind; Ekaki's eyes widened and she turned toward her opponent, muttering all sorts of curses under her breath before finally managing to form a coherent sentence.

"How did you do it?", she asked, snarling slightly. "Completely negating my powers... no, taking control of my images with your own. _How?_"

"You should know better than to try and fight a member of Organization XIII using his own element," he explained, waving his hand over his book and causing a swirling circle of many-colored icons to appear in the air above it, each accompanied by a Roman numeral. "My power is that of Illusion... making _your _illusions utterly useless against me."

She snarled, rapidly flipping back to pages she had used before and attempting to attack him with all sorts of monstrous images; each and every one of them, no matter how powerful, simply passed through Zexion harmlessly like the immaterial shapes they were. He just shook his head, and instantly they all disintegrated away into nothing, leaving the space around the blue-haired man empty once again.

"Unfortunately, my strength is a bit lacking compared to the others," he said, raising his hand once again. "So I needed to drag this fight out a bit if I wanted to build up enough energy... to do _this._"

Instantly, Ekaki found herself surrounded by five identical images of Zexion, standing in a pentagon formation with her in the very center. The real Zexion, the only one of the group holding his book rather than an illusory copy of some other weapon, stood several feet outside the circle, pointing at the Fangirl with one hand. She attempted to move out of the center of the formation, but found that her feet had been bound to the floor; glancing down, she noticed that they were surrounded by a circle of purplish-blue energy, which was connected to the weapon of each of Zexion's doppelgangers by a beam of the same color. For just a moment, her eyes glowed red and she snarled, but before she could do anything more than that she was engulfed in a massive explosion of blue energy which started directly beneath her and expanded to fill the entire space of the pentagon-shaped zone that had formed on the floor.

When the explosion cleared away, Zexion was a bit shocked to find that his opponent was still alive, albeit heavily wounded. Several of her pencil-claws had been shattered, her sketchbook had been torn to shreds, and her glasses were cracked and hung loosely off of her face, but she was still standing... at least for a few moments before she wobbled and then fell to her knees, just sitting there with a stunned expression on her face and unsuccessfully attempting to stutter out some sort of response to what had just happened.

"Hmm... that was unexpected..."

Just then, another one of the Fangirls came flying into his view, trailing purple hair and pink flower petals behind her as she slammed into the ground and rolled for several feet before coming to a stop just a few feet away from where Ekaki was half-standing. Tenkyou stood back up and rubbed her head slightly, but otherwise seemed to be unharmed; she then turned and spotted both Zexion and Ekaki, her mouth twisting into a disturbingly toothy grin.

"Unexpected, huh?", she said, glancing to Zexion for a second before turning back toward her fellow Fangirl. "Well, you know what's _even more _unexpected?"

Zexion backed away a bit; based on what he had seen before, he honestly didn't _want _to know what the Fangirl had thought of. She didn't give him a chance to say anything, however, just walking over toward Ekaki and smacking her in the face with her stuffed pony, sending her toppling over to the ground. Still grinning, she turned back toward Zexion and answered her own question.

"_This!_"

With that, she raised one of her clawed hands and thrust it into Ekaki's chest, causing her to instantly become surrounded in green light before exploding into a spray of computer code. She then walked right up to Zexion and suddenly licked his face before turning and running back toward her own battle, blurting out one last thing before she was out of hearing range.

"Gotta go now," she said, turning back toward him and grinning, "My new pony's being _very _naughty!"

Zexion just stood and blinked, waiting a few seconds before raising one of his sleeves to wipe the disgusting residue of Fangirl-slobber off of his cheek and then shuddering for several seconds afterward. Though his own Fangirl opponent was no longer present, he certainly didn't _feel_ like he had just won the fight.

* * *

Vexen blocked a series of exploding green cannonballs from Nitsugi's bazooka, finding that these blasts had much more power behind them than the ones she had been using previously; he was no longer able to just plow ahead through them with his shield blocking everything his opponent could throw at it, as doing so would never get him anywhere with every blast shoving him back faster than he could move forward. Once again he attempted to dodge some of the blasts while blocking others, but even this was not enough; the previous strategy was not going to work now that she had brought out her secret weapon.

"Damn it," he muttered to himself, gritting his teeth as another blast shoved him back ten feet as it bounced off of his shield. "I should have finished her off then and there, when I first managed to reach her..."

He avoided several blasts in a row, running forward as quickly as he could with his shield held out in front of him, but the cannonballs were coming too quickly and too close together for him to get very far; he attempted to intercept some of them with spikes of ice, but he was simply not fast enough to knock enough of them off course to do much good. As a dozen of the explosions hit his shield in rapid succession, he finally lost his balance and toppled over backward, landing on his back on the floor. Another few waves of green orbs flew overhead, and then suddenly they stopped; apparently, the Fangirl had noticed that no more of them had been exploding in the past few seconds and decided to stop firing to see what had happened.

As Nitsugi slowly crept forward to get a closer look at her fallen opponent's body, Vexen just smiled; this was perfect! He released his shield and let his hand slip down by his side as if he had gone unconscious, then carefully built up energy in his palm, focusing on pulling away the warmth from the floor beneath the Fangirl's feet. Just as she came within a few steps of the spot where he had fallen, a patch of ice instantly froze into existence beneath her, causing her to slip and fall flat on her behind. Vexen grasped his shield's handle once again and sprung to his feet with surprising speed, flinging a massive icicle at the bazooka in her hands and causing it to go sailing through the air and clattering to the floor just out of her reach.

"I suppose you don't have any more secret techniques up your sleeve, then?"

She stood back up and lunged for the bazooka, but before she had time to pick it up and turn around, Vexen had already started to form a massive blade of ice on the edge of his shield, just as he had done before. Nitsugi turned and aimed her weapon, beginning to charge it with the energy required to fire the barrages of green cannonballs, but she was not quite fast enough; just as she was ready to fire, her opponent brought down his own ice-encased weapon, slicing the bazooka in half and causing it to explode in Nitsugi's face. She was sent flying backward, only barely managing to catch herself on all fours as she hit the ground.

Vexen lunged forward and landed a direct hit on the Fangirl, nearly splitting her upper torso open and showering the area with green sparks. He then suddenly leaped ten feet into the air, slamming his weapon directly onto Nitsugi's head as he came plunging back down and causing both her and the blade of ice to shatter instantly. For a few seconds afterward, a cloud of ice shards and translucent fragments of computer code filled the air around the old scientist as he breathed heavily, exhausted from the battle; from a brief glance around the room, he spotted Lexaeus and Zexion each standing alone. There was now only one Fangirl left-_-_Tenkyou Shikeiro, the deranged purple-haired one that was fighting Marluxia.

"Wait a second," he said, scanning the room once again in an attempt to find the strange sight that he had glossed over before. After a few moments, he found it-_-_a pink-furred horse, lunging at the one remaining Fangirl with its scythe-like horn. His eye twitched furiously at the sight of it, the twitch only growing worse when he realized exactly where the unusual creature must have come from. "Is that... _thing_... Marluxia?"

* * *

Marluxia, now getting used to his new ungulate form, charged at Tenkyou with his scythe-horn, skidding to a stop and then kicking at her with both of his hind legs when she avoided that attack. She was not expecting such an attack and was slammed hard in the chest by both hooves, smashing to the ground on her back and groaning for a few seconds before springing back to her feet.

"Bad, bad, pony," she snarled, her eyes now constantly glowing red. She tossed her stuffed pony aside and raised both of her clawed hands, surrounding each of them with swirls of multicolored energy before beginning to circle around her opponent. "Looks like I'm gonna have to... _break _you."

She lunged forward with her arms outstretched, latching onto Marluxia's back and digging into him with both sets of claws. He neighed in pain, thrashing around in an attempt to throw her aside, but found that this wasn't working; fortunately, however, his power over plants was just as strong as ever in this form, and he was able to cause several thorny vines to burst forth from the floor and pull her away for him, swinging the Fangirl around several times before throwing her to the ground. The vines broke up and dissolved away into energy once again as Marluxia glanced back at his fresh wounds, wondering exactly where they would be once he managed to get back to his own shape again.

Tenkyou stood back up again, her claws now glowing even brighter than before. She raised them up over her head, breathing heavily and snarling with rage; almost immediately, the previously-faint glow of rainbow-colored energy grew brighter and more chaotic, crackling like electricity in some places while rising up like flames in others. She slowly began to build up a massive ball of energy between her hands, now pushed even further beyond sanity than she was to begin with; she no longer cared about the possibility of accidentally damaging the Internet's structure or harming Roxas in the process, only about destroying the pink-haired man who had humiliated her even in the form of a cute, fluffy pony.

Marluxia, however, remained calm. Even as the orb of chaotic energy grew to the size of a small house, he just stood perfectly still, staring ahead at his Fangirl opponent with a look of concentration in his horse-like eyes. Suddenly, the energy ball stopped growing and its energy rapidly fizzled out into nothing; the rage vanished from Tenkyou's face, replaced by utter confusion, as even the energy surging around her claws died down against her will. In an instant, vines sprouted from dozens of points on her body, growing to bloom in a matter of seconds and covering the stunned Fangirl with what appeared to be red roses. For a few seconds afterward, Marluxia was surrounded by rainbow-colored energy as he rapidly shifted back to human form.

"Flowers?", Tenkyou gasped weakly, staring at the plants rapidly growing from almost every inch of her own body. "What... what's going on?"

"I wasn't sure I'd be able to handle you," he answered, "So near the beginning of this battle, I planted a special seed on your body... right there, on your shoulder. It was just a matter of time before this happened, so all I had to do was survive until then."

The last Fangirl standing shrieked in pain for just a moment as the plants finally overwhelmed her, exploding into a flash of green and a swirl of computer code that tore apart the vines and sent the flowers' petals fluttering to the ground all over the place.

"Hmm... that's too bad," Marluxia said, picking up the shredded remains of one of the flowers. "I could have used a few more of those seeds..."

As Marluxia paused for a moment to catch his breath, each of the other three Organization members walked over toward his position, each of which looking exhausted from their own battles with the strange and powerful Fangirls. Once the four all acknowledged that the Fangirl threat was finally eliminated, they rushed over to Roxas' place of imprisonment, finding the boy hanging up against the wall by a pair of shackles constructed from the same rubbery material as the rest of the sphere.

"Hmph... they're just like the walls," Vexen said, staring at the restraints, "So how are we going to go about freeing Number Thirteen without injuring him in the process?"

In a matter of seconds, Lexaeus answered that question for him, reaching up and prying open one of the shackles with his bare hands for just long enough to release Roxas' left arm. As the first of the restraints oozed shut once again, he did the same to the one on the other side, and Marluxia caught the boy as he dropped from the place where he had previously been hanging.

"Well, that was easy enough," Zexion said, jotting something down in his book as Marluxia passed Roxas' limp, unconscious body to Lexaeus. "Now... let's get out of this place before we attract any more unwanted Fangirl attention."


	26. The Way Home

**CHAPTER 25**  
_~ The Way Home ~_

The Organization's four-man team left the core of the Internet the same way they had entered, with Lexaeus and Marluxia blasting open a gaping hole in the side of the orb and then quickly rushing through after Zexion and Vexen. The last of the four to exit, Lexaeus dematerialized his weapon and hefted Roxas' unconscious form onto his shoulder in its place as he left, jumping through the hole just before it grew too small for him to fit.

For several seconds, the four just stood outside the massive white orb, catching their breath after their last battles in preparation for the return trip that now faced them. Of the group, all but Lexaeus looked far worse than when they first came in; Marluxia's cloak had been all but destroyed and the black shirt he wore underneath wasn't in much better shape, as only one of its sleeves was still attached to the rest and nearly half of his lightly burned chest was exposed. Vexen's face was already visibly bruised in a few places and he appeared to be limping a bit, as if he was having difficulty carrying the full weight of his shield in just one hand after what he had been through. Even Zexion, whose battles had been far less physical than the others as always, had hair soaked with sweat and his breathing a bit heavier than usual. Though Lexaeus had clearly fared better than the rest, even he looked a bit more worn-down than most of the others had ever seen him, wiping some more sweat from his forehead and then glancing at Roxas for a moment as if checking to see if he was still incapable of walking on his own.

"So," Marluxia said, glancing over at Zexion, "You're going to track Zagan's scent back to where we came in, right?"

"That was the plan," Zexion said, nodding slightly. "We should hurry, though... there's no way of knowing how the Fangirls will react when they find out that we've taken Roxas back from them."

The other three followed closely behind as the blue-haired man walked around the ring of semi-solid energy surrounding the Internet's core, eventually finding the bridge of floating platforms they had used to cross the river of text below for the first time. They crossed it quickly but carefully, and before long they were on the other side, not far away from the top of the unbelievably long staircase that connected this central zone of the Internet to the area where they had encountered the Fangirl-infested suburban area. For a second, Zexion paused at the top step, just sniffing the air; he then turned toward the others with a worried look on his face.

"I can barely pick up Zagan's trail anymore, even here," he said, sniffing again in attempt to pick up anything before continuing. "And worse... the scent of Fangirls is absolutely overwhelming up ahead."

"It's just like before," Lexaeus said, looking out from the top of the staircase and spotting the sprawling housing area. Though he couldn't make out individual Fangirls from this distance, it was clear that hordes of _something _were moving around along the rooftops. "Swarming with thousands of Fangirls... and with your illusion being gone, I imagine they must be angry."

Vexen paced back and forth a bit, then turned toward the others, apparently having come up with an idea.

"Perhaps we can take another path," he said, glancing back at the other bridges leading away from the Internet's core. "I'm not absolutely certain, but I suspect that many of those paths would eventually take us back to that tower... and from there, we could surely find the path we took."

Zexion nodded slightly.

"All while avoiding another battle with that swarm... that could work."

Marluxia began to walk back toward the bridge of floating platforms, but before he was able to take a step onto the first of them, the platform in front of him suddenly plummeted into the rushing strings of text below, almost instantly vanishing as it was swept away by the current. Each of the other platforms followed suit, and before long there was no longer a bridge there at all. He paused and thought things over for a few moments, then held out one hand toward the other side of the chasm and launched a series of thick vines across, rapidly lashing them together and creating a new bridge of rope-like vines.

"Maybe not quite as sturdy as the old bridge," he said, turning back toward the other members, "But it should hold up well enough."

He dematerialized his scythe in order to have both hands free, then began to cross the bridge, carefully holding onto the ropes on either side to support himself and make sure he wasn't putting too much weight on the vines he was stepping on. When he was almost halfway across, however, he noticed a red glow beginning to form somewhere beneath him, rapidly rising up from below the river of text. He backed away a bit, but not quickly enough-_-_before he was able to get back off of the bridge, a seemingly-endless wall of flames erupted from the abyss, burning the rope-bridge in half instantly and causing the pink-haired man to swing down toward the rushing text below, his feet dangling just inches away from the occasional word that splashed up above the others as he held tightly onto the remaining vines.

"Gah... didn't see _that _coming," he grumbled, pulling himself up onto the platform where the rest of the Organization members were standing and brushing himself off a bit. "Guess we're not heading back that way after all..."

Vexen put his hand to his chin for a second, then raised it in the direction of the wall, launching a series of giant icicle-like projectiles into it. Each of the icicles burst through the wall and then melted in mid-flight a split-second later, managing to punch several holes in the barrier... which were soon filled back in as it regenerated just like the white sphere's walls had done before.

"Indeed... it appears we have no other choice. We'll have to fight our way through that Fangirl swarm once again..."

"I'm a bit too drained to pull of the same trick twice," Zexion said, beginning to take his first steps down the stairs. "I hope you guys have enough power left to handle them."

"We need not destroy all of them," Lexaeus said, following him down the stairs while keeping a careful grip on Roxas. "Only enough to clear a path for us to escape. Between the four of us, we should be more than capable of such a task."

As they began the long walk down the staircase that would lead them straight into the heart of one of the largest Fangirl swarms the Organization had ever seen, Lexaeus thought for a moment that he had felt Roxas move slightly. He turned his head toward his right shoulder which the boy was still draped over, but he still appeared to be just as unconscious as before. After watching him a bit more and seeing no further movement, he returned his attention to the road ahead as the Fangirl suburb below them began to loom ever closer.

"Not much longer now," Zexion said, "And it looks like they're all piling in on this end... we might have some trouble with this one."

* * *

Several non-numbered members jumped a bit as Kisaki's eyes suddenly glazed over and she tumbled forward out of her chair, crashing to the ground limply. Demyx abruptly stopped the song he was playing, one of his fingers accidentally plucking the wrong string and causing a sharp off-key note to fill the air for just one moment before his sitar vanished in a flurry of bubbles and blue light.

"Whoa! What happened to her?"

"No idea," Banbu said, kneeling down and poking at the unconscious girl. There was no response, not even the slightest movement. "She just kinda... fell over."

"Right before it happened, she got this weird blank look in her eyes," a pale, pointy-eared girl commented. She crouched down and took a closer look alongside Banbu, noticing that her eyes were still open and shuddering slightly. "Look, they're still like that, open and everything... creepy."

Demyx and Tundo both knelt down and picked Kisaki up, the fat man supporting her back while Demyx held onto her legs. They carried her out of the small recreation room where they had all been hanging out before and headed over to the sickbay as quickly as they could given the awkward position they were forced to walk in while carrying the unconscious girl. Eventually they managed to get her there, plopping her down on one of the vacant beds next to Larxene.

"Oh great," she mumbled, rolling her eyes. "You just _had _to put her next to me, huh?"

Tundo briefly frowned in her direction, though neither he or Demyx chose to actually say anything to her; instead, they headed over to the other end of the room where Estera and Slobodan were standing, dressed in labcoats rather than their usual Organization uniforms and going over a small stack of reports on the health of the various members being cared for in the room.

"Hey, you guys," Demyx said, skidding to a stop right in front of them, "We've got a problem... Kisaki just kind of... fell over, and-_-_"

"Kisaki?", Estera asked, turning around and suddenly looking a bit worried. "What's happened to her?"

Demyx sighed and scratched his head slightly.

"Well, I was just about to get to that part... nobody knows what's wrong with her."

"Yeah," Tundo added, "She's just sittin' there all knocked out, but she's got this weird look on 'er face and 'er eyes're still open."

"Strange," Estera mumbled, scooping up a variety of medical testing equipment and heading over toward the bed where Kisaki had been placed. "She seemed healthy as ever when she came by here the night before last, according to Larxene over there... I wonder what could have happened."

Slobodan followed after her with a clipboard in his hands, jotting down some details about Kisaki's appearance and what they currently knew of her condition before standing aside so that Estera could get to work trying to figure out what, exactly, was wrong with her. Several minutes passed as she prodded at Kisaki's body with all sorts of instruments, all of them turning up the exact same result-_-_absolutely nothing. Whatever was wrong with Kisaki, it seemed to have no physical symptoms whatsoever aside from her sudden fall into unconsciousness; there was no change in her body temperature, no problems with circulation, no difficulty breathing... as far as anyone could tell, she was perfectly healthy.

Just as Estera was about to walk back over to the cabinets that held Marluxia's medical supplies in search of some more advanced tests she could perform, Slobodan noticed a slight twitch in Kisaki's fingers and held his bespectacled coworker back with one hand on the shoulder, directing her to watch closely. As the two stared at Kisaki intently, slowly she began to move again, this time a bit more rapidly. For nearly a full minute, she almost appeared to be having a seizure, and then suddenly she bolted upright in her bed, the blank look in her eyes instantly replaced by something that resembled a combination of fear and a determined expression that all of those in the room knew well.

"I... I can't hold on like this for long," she said, leaping out of her bed in one swift motion but then appearing as if she was struggling to move at all once she was standing. She spotted Larxene and fell toward her, grasping her shoulders with both hands and shaking her slightly. "You... Larxene, you're the one I... did you read it? It's not just... I mean, you have to-_-_"

Her lips continued to move for a moment afterward, but no sound came out, her sentence interrupted by her eyes going blank again just like they had before. A second afterward, she lost all semblance of consciousness and collapsed face-first right into Larxene's lap, causing her face to curl into a look of disgust for just a moment as she rolled the motionless girl off onto an empty part of the bed next to her instead. Slobodan immediately picked her up and placed her back into her own bed, watching as her eyes stayed open (albeit with that same blank, lifeless look to them) for several minutes before finally slipping shut.

"Dude... what was all that about?"

"No idea," Larxene said, shrugging and glancing over toward Demyx. "It's not like I understand deranged rambling sentence fragments any better than the rest of you guys, y'know."

* * *

Vexen waved one hand in the direction of the horde of Fangirls that was now rapidly approaching, causing icy winds to swirl all throughout the area and fill the air around the swarm with sharp crystals of ice that dug into them with every move they made, not damaging them enough to destroy them but certainly succeeding in slowing them down. Marluxia sent a flurry of sharp-edged flower petals slicing through the crowd while they were distracted, cutting down dozens of Fangirls in a single attack but barely making a dent in the overall swarm-_-_for every Fangirl he managed to destroy, another one quickly moved in from behind to take its place. Zexion, too worn-out to continue fighting at full power any longer, hung back and watched over Roxas' unconscious body while Lexaeus charged headlong into the swarm, crushing every Fangirl that dared approach him with a single swing of his massive weapon.

Before long, however, it became clear that this swarm was simply too much for them; nothing they did seemed to stem the tide of Fangirls and Fanboys that poured forth from the windows and doors of the suburban houses. At best, they occasionally managed to slow the swarm's growth for a few moments before backup quickly came, and if anything these brief moments of rest seemed to be getting shorter and shorter as the fight went on.

"We can't just stand and fight like this any longer," Vexen said, hunching over to support his shield's weight and breathing heavily. He deflected a barrage of fireballs from a group of Flamers perched on a nearby roof, countering with a series of sharpened icicles before continuing. "Lexaeus, Marluxia... is there any way the two of you could clear a path for us?"

"I still have plenty of strength left," the larger of the two men said, hopping back away from the swarm of Fangirls for the moment and standing beside Vexen. "I'm not sure if I can hold them off for long alone, but... perhaps with a bit of help..."

Marluxia skidded to a stop between the two older men, having blocked an attack from a surprisingly powerful Fangirl that nearly sent him flying. He turned toward Vexen and Lexaeus, then chipped in with his own opinion.

"It might just be me... but it almost seems like they're getting _stronger,_" he said, pausing to catch his breath for a few moments and rubbing a sore spot on one of his arms. "Whatever it is... we can't stay here. What did you have in mind, Lexaeus?"

"Well... I'm hesitant to use it," he said, "But I believe I do have a technique that could keep even this swarm at bay... at least temporarily."

"_That_ technique," Vexen said, his eyes widening. "But the last time you tried that, you barely survived the strain! To use such a thing against a swarm of _this _size..."

"That's right... I may be risking my life here," Lexaeus said, nodding. "But if we don't do _something, _all of our lives will be in danger."

He paused for a moment and held his weapon out in front of him, rotating his hand so that its blade was pointed straight down toward the ground. He then turned his head toward both Vexen and Marluxia for just long enough to explain how they could help.

"Vexen, Marluxia... I need you to hold off the swarm while I prepare for this."

Both nodded and then charged into the Fangirlish hordes, Vexen once again forming a massive blade of ice on the spiked edge of his shield while Marluxia spun along the ground surrounded in a cloak of dark pinkish energy, cutting Fangirls in half everywhere he went. Lexaeus smiled slightly for just a moment before his face hardened once again and he began to concentrate on the potentially-dangerous technique he was about to perform. Zexion just stood back and watched as reddish energy began to swirl up around his friend's body in small wisps, gradually building up into more and more as he charged up the power necessary for such an attack.

One of the newly-named Hater Fanboys briefly caught Vexen in a headlock before he elbowed the creature to break free and then split it in half with his blade of ice, following up on that attack by lashing out at several more of the Fanboys and crushing them all with a single strike. Marluxia emerged from the ground suddenly, leaping up while still rapidly spinning his scythe all around himself so that every Fangirl in a six-foot radius was instantly sliced in two. As he landed, more Fangirls approached from all directions, but he held perfectly still as he charged the ground with a circle of energy; when it was complete, the Fangirls around him suddenly found themselves locked in place where they stood, rendered completely incapable of dodging the powerful 360-degree slash that came a split-second later and destroyed them all in one massive flash of green and fluttering of computer code.

Lexaeus grunted with effort and touched his weapon lightly to the ground, his elemental energy now raging in a semi-translucent vortex of red all around him. His cloak was fluttering in the wind kicked up by the sheer force of this energy, and as he glanced at his large friend's feet Zexion noticed that a patch of the floor beneath them had transformed into gray stone. For a moment, he turned his attention back toward the swarm, watching as Vexen was pelted by a series of fireballs from a dozen Flamer Fangirls and knocked to the ground; Marluxia was simultaneously struck by the beams of both a Homophobia Fangirl and a Yaoinator, their sexual orientation-altering effects apparently cancelling each other out but still managing to send him flying backward as the reaction between them caused an explosion. He then glanced down to where Roxas was lying, only to find that the boy was no longer lying down at all-_-_he was sitting upright, appearing to be a bit dazed but conscious.

"Roxas!"

"No," a girl's voice coming from the boy's body said, "It's Xion... But I... I think I can help you."

"Help us? How, exactly?"

"Because of... the way I am," Xion's voice continued as Roxas slowly stood up, a pale greenish aura beginning to form around his body. "I have access to the powers that all Fangirls possess. It's been a long time since I've tried it, but... I think I can open a portal to the outside from here."

Xion, controlling Roxas' body in the absence of one of her own, caused the boy to raise one hand in front of him. A few moments passed as the green energy that surrounded him intensified; a strange sound filled the air for just a second as the space in front of him first rippled and then was violently torn open, creating a swirling neon-green portal with a few zeroes and ones darting around along its edges.

"Lexaeus!", Zexion called out, his voice barely managing to catch his attention through the roaring torrent of energy that now surrounded him. "Change of plans!"

The large man paused for a moment and turned back, gasping slightly as he noticed Roxas standing up and a portal hovering in the air in front of him. He immediately raised his weapon, causing the stone that had begun to form at his feet to rapidly recede and the storm of reddish energy around him to weaken for several seconds before finally dying down. Though he had not actually gone through with the desperation attack he was preparing to unleash, he was still a bit drained from the rapid buildup of power, and breathed heavily as he walked over to where Zexion was standing.

"A portal... like the ones the Fangirls use," he said, leaning on his weapon slightly to support his weight as he stared into the opening before him. "So it's true, then... Xion acquired their power even without a complete Fangirlization..."

Zexion nodded slightly, then turned back in the direction of the approaching swarm and called for the other two members of the Organization to retreat.

"Vexen! Marluxia!", he yelled, taking a few steps closer to them. "Leave the Fangirls behind, we've found another way out!"

Marluxia finished off the last few Fangirls in front of him, then dematerialized his scythe and quickly ran back in Zexion's direction. Vexen used his shield to deflect the assaults of several Hater Fanboys that had charged in his direction, then followed in Marluxia's footsteps, unsummoning his shield to get its weight off of his arm and flinging a blast of ice to the floor to trip up any Fangirls that might attempt to follow after him. Before long, all five Organization members present were standing around the swirling green portal that had been opened up for them, and Vexen glanced down at Roxas' face for a moment, quickly realizing that it was not Roxas who was in control but Xion.

"Xion... could you direct this portal to the location of the phone we used to enter?"

"Yes, that should be-_-arrrgh!_"

She groaned in pain and suddenly began breathing heavily, clutching her head with her free hand. She then turned and shook her head slightly in Vexen's direction, a worried look coming over her face.

"She's found us," Xion's voice said, wavering slightly. Before anyone could ask for an explanation, she focused even more of her power into the portal, causing it to enlarge to several times its previous size. "There's no time... we have to go _now!_"

Vexen hesitated for just a moment, then cast all his worries aside and jumped through the portal. Lexaeus stood back up to his full height, grunting a bit with effort as he dematerialized his weapon and then followed. Marluxia and Zexion ran into the hole in space right after each other, leaving Xion standing alone in the void of the Internet for just a moment before she propelled Roxas' body through the opening with all her strength. The portal then seemed to be abruptly forced shut by some outside force, creating a shower of green sparks across the metallic floor below as it sealed itself up just seconds too late to prevent any of its black-cloaked passengers from making their escape.

* * *

For what seemed like several minutes, the five Organization members felt as if they were rapidly flying forward through a series of winding passages, though the speed of their movement made it difficult for them to tell where they were or where they were going. Everything rushed past as streaks of light in various colors, at first mostly green with white streaks but fading to bluer and bluer shades as they moved ever onward. Somehow, they could tell that Xion had moved out in front of them, though none of them could actually see her-_-_only a blur of greenish energy interlaced with golden light that rushed forward in front of them at a speed greater than any of theirs. The others felt as if they had no control over their movement at all, simply being pulled along in the wake of Xion; the Fangirl method of Internet transport, it appeared, was not quite the same thing as what Zagan's phone did after all.

Eventually, another portal appeared in the distance, this one rectangular in shape. Roxas and Xion's combined golden-green light was the first to reach the gateway, with the other four following not far behind; as soon as they passed through it, their surroundings suddenly changed again, and in an instant they were all lying sprawled out on the floor in what appeared to be a school library.

Zexion was the first of the older members to stand, glancing around at his surroundings with a slightly dazed look on his face for a few moments; he was relieved to finally have normal surroundings to look at again, after what must have been nearly a full day spent inside the Internet. Marluxia, Vexen, and finally Lexaeus stood up as well, each groaning and taking deep breaths; direct Internet travel, it seemed, had not sat well with their already-exhausted bodies.

"Sorry about that," Xion said through Roxas' body, walking over toward where the others were standing. "That trip could have been a bit more pleasant, but... if we hadn't left the Internet when we did, we might have ended up stuck inside forever."

"So," Vexen said, putting his hand to his chin. "You're saying that the Fangirl Queen has the power to control the portals leading in and out of the Internet?"

"Yes, that's right... she can only control those leading to or from Fangirl territory, but every day more and more of the Internet comes under her control. Before long..."

"We'll be looking at a fully Fangirl-dominated Internet," Zexion said, shuddering slightly. "That's a scary thought..."

"And what then?", Lexaeus asked, "Does the Fangirl Queen have some sort of plan after that?"

"I don't know," Xion said, sighing. "I've only heard a few things, here and there... not enough to piece together much. But there was one thing..."

She paused for a moment, nearly stumbling and falling but catching herself; it was clear that Roxas' body didn't have enough energy left for her to keep this up much longer. She took a deep breath, then continued, wanting to make sure the Organization heard what she had to say before she finally drifted off.

"I don't know how," she said, breathing heavily between sentences. "But... she's been leaving the Internet a lot lately... and I've heard some of them mention that she's been trying to find a way to take on a solid form on the outside."

With that, Roxas' eyes slipped shut and he slumped to the ground, Zexion barely catching him in time to avoid letting the boy's face smack into the tile floor below. This time, Marluxia decided to take on the duty of carrying their recently-rescued thirteenth member, and all at once the group walked out of the library's front doors, expecting to begin yet another long journey that stood in their way of getting back home.

Instead, they found the Dimensional Hippievan appearing in a flash from the other end of the street, rolling to a stop right in front of the staircase that led down from the library's front entrance. Vexen laughed slightly at the sight of it; whoever was working in the Fangirl Detection System was certainly doing their job well today. The four walked down the steps and approached the van, the oldest of the group swinging open the front passenger-side door and climbing in next to the driver.

"Ah, Xigbar," he said, sighing slightly as he put on his seatbelt. "That's a relief... for a moment I was worried we would have to deal with Larxene on the ride home. Or perhaps Luxord, with those absurd fuzzy dice he always puts on the mirror..."

"Well damn, I can put 'em up there if ya like 'em so much," the one-eyed elf said, snickering slightly and holding up Luxord's signature car decorations in one of his hands. "He made me bring 'em along when he found out I was gonna be takin' the van out here to pick you guys up."

Vexen just rolled his eyes in response, then sighed and slumped down in his seat, ready for some well-deserved rest after his trip through the Internet and back. Xigbar turned to the back of the van, looking over the rest of his passengers for a moment before speaking.

"Whoa... Marluxia, you're lookin' pretty rough," he said, a bit stunned at the damage his clothes had sustained; a cloak being a bit damaged after a swarm was nothing new, but for one to be completely destroyed was a rare sight. "What happened in there?"

"Fangirls," the pink-haired man said, closing his eyes and sighing. "Easily the strongest ones on record. I don't know _what _we would have done if there happened to have been more than four of them..."

"I suppose I could have handled a second one," Lexaeus said, turning toward Marluxia and smiling slightly. "Depending on what sort of powers it possessed, of course."

"The important thing is," Vexen interrupted, "That we successfully retrieved Roxas with relatively little loss on our own parts. Xigbar, start the van... we should return to base immediately."

Xigbar grinned, then turned the key in the van's ignition, causing the vehicle to rumble to life. A few seconds later, the Dimensional Hippievan rolled forward and picked up speed, vanishing in a flash of energy just in time to avoid running a stop sign. Finally, Roxas-_-_and the team sent into the depths of the Internet to rescue him-_-_was headed home.

* * *

Riku smiled as the roomful of Keybearers around him suddenly burst into applause in his honor; though he himself had known that he had passed for nearly a day already, the results of the most recent Mark of Mastery exam were finally being announced to the masses. Even Sora, still a bit shaken from his experiences inside the simulation room and undoubtedly disappointed by his own failure, was clapping his heart out along with the rest.

"Now, Riku, if you will," Ansem said, stepping away from where he had been standing and beginning to walk toward a nearby doorway. "It is time for you to choose the characteristics of your new Keyblade and armor... the tools that will forever identify you as a full-fledged Keyblade Master from this point onward."

The silver-haired boy stood up from his seat and followed after Ansem, passing the table where the other four Keyblade Masters sat as he went. Ignis turned toward him and grinned, giving him a thumbs-up; his hands were still bandaged, though it appeared he no longer had any trouble moving them about without hurting himself. Terra, Aqua, and Ven all waved to him as he turned in their direction, and Riku smiled; he had only just then realized that the next time he came to the Keybearers' mess hall, he would be sitting at that round table with the four of them instead of being crammed into the other end of the room with the hundreds of lower-ranked soldiers like sardines in a can.

Riku followed the leader of the Keybearers as he passed through a series of underground halls, eventually reaching the armory where the many ordinary, mass-produced Keyblades wielded by almost every last one of the armored soldiers were kept in racks long the walls. Ansem paused for a moment, as if trying to remember something, and then walked over to a section of the racks which always seemed to be left empty. He raised his Keyblade's handle up to the wall, moving it around for a few seconds in search of something; eventually, he found what he was looking for and pressed the handle up against a small, circular gap in the wall, pushing one of its buttons and causing it to generate an electrical humming sound for a few seconds. This was followed by a complex series of clicks and whirs as something behind the wall was set into motion; Ansem stepped back, and in a matter of seconds the empty racks (along with the wall behind them) shifted and moved out of the way, transforming into a staircase leading even further down below the city.

"This secret chamber contains the equipment for crafting new Keyblades," Ansem said, taking a few steps down the newly-revealed staircase and coughing slightly as his movement kicked up some dust. "Not those mass-produced copies, like that which you currently wield... but true Keyblades, with access to all the strength and capabilities of those that Terra, Aqua, Ventus, and Ignis now wield."

He continued down the stairs, which spiraled deeper and deeper down; Riku soon followed, walking quickly to catch up with him as he began to speak once again.

"You must never reveal this place to those unworthy of Keyblade Master status," he said, this time continuing to walk as he spoke rather than pausing and turning back. "You see... the purpose of the Mark of Mastery exam, and the abilities withheld from those who do not pass, is to prevent the full potential of the Keyblade from falling into the hands of those unworthy of wielding it. There are surely spies hiding among us, and those who would abuse such power if they came upon it before they are ready... they must not be given access to this chamber. The survival of the Keybearers depends on this."

In the armory above, Zagan stood just outside the door, peeking in just in time to see the secret staircase hidden in the wall slide back into its disguised state. He smirked slightly, having heard everything that Ansem had just said. He briefly glanced around, making sure that he was alone, and then laughed slightly before mumbling a few words under his breath.

"Ah, poor old _Master_ Ansem... you don't know how right you are."


	27. The Past and Present

**CHAPTER 26**  
_~ The Past and Present ~_

Ansem just stood back as Riku tapped away at the massive computer system in the hidden room, inputting features that he wanted in his new Keyblade. There were inputs for nearly every feature one could imagine, from basic details like length, weight, and shape to more in-depth information such as the layout of the various buttons on the handle and what sort of vehicle form the weapon would transform into when used in that way. Riku chose a curved blade, much like the one of the mass-produced Keyblade he currently wielded; the overall appearance of the weapon resembled a bat's wing, a somewhat refreshing change from the heavy metallic designs of the four Elementals and their predecessor Eraqus.

"Very good," the old man said, patting Riku on the shoulder and looking over the features of the brand-new Keyblade that would soon be created. "Now... listen closely. As a Keyblade Master, this room and its workings are not the only secret you are privy to... it is time that I told you the story of how the weapon we know as a Keyblade came into existence."

Riku turned slightly, a puzzled look on his face.

"But... you made the Keyblades," he said, glancing to the machine he had just been hard at work on. "You crafted each one of them using all this machinery down here... right?"

"Yes, that is indeed the case," Ansem said, nodding slightly. He then paced over to a wall plastered with a variety of old papers, protected by a glass case that kept the dust and moisture off of the aging writings. "But have you not wondered, at least once, where one would get the idea for such an unusual weapon? A sword in the shape of a key... isn't it strange?"

"Yeah... I guess it _is _kind of a weird shape for a weapon, now that I think about it."

He glanced up at his own wing-shaped Keyblade, recorded into the computer's database but not yet transferred over to the rest of the machines to be built piece by piece.

"But anyway... to tell the truth, the idea of the Keyblade was not entirely my own," Ansem said, directing Riku to look at the ancient pages preserved behind the glass along the wall. "You see, there is an ancient legend, passed down since before the dawn of recorded history... several versions of the tale exist, but they all share one important similarity."

Riku walked over to the wall where he was standing and watched as he pointed to a series of sketches, all different from each other but with certain features in common between them; most notably was the fact that every last one of them seemed to be composed of two smaller weapons crossed over each other in the shape of the letter X.

"A mystical weapon with a connection to the will of the world itself... and the power to end wars."

He pointed to several pages in various ancient languages, none of which Riku could read even a single word of. He glanced around looking for any sign of something familiar, perhaps Japanese or English, but soon gave up; apparently neither of the languages he knew were quite ancient enough to have their own versions of the story, or at least not ones that Ansem had copies of.

"This legendary weapon... is known by the name 'χ-Blade.'"

Riku turned toward Ansem, looking a bit confused once again.

"Keyblade? But... none of these pictures look anything like a key."

"Not 'Keyblade,'" Ansem corrected him, pointing toward a symbol on one of the pages that resembled a curly X. "It's spelled with this letter... 'χ-Blade.' Some say 'key,' others say 'kai,' but all refer to the same thing. The resemblance of the weapons we hold to literal keys was my idea... a bit of a play on words, you could say."

There was a brief pause, as Ansem read over some of the pages on the wall for the first time in years, remembering the years of research he undertook before finally deciding to construct his own mechanical imitations of the legendary weapon rather than seeking out something which may or may not still exist at all. Finally, he turned back toward Riku and continued.

"Legends say that the χ-Blade would only appear in times of great conflict, when the entire world's future is at stake," he said, slowly walking in front of the case of papers and glancing up and down at several of them as he passed. "In my research, I learned that in several deserts throughout the world there are sheets of solid glass buried beneath the sand, similar to those created by nuclear explosions... some believe these may in fact be the aftermath of long-forgotten battles where the χ-Blade chose to intervene."

"Chose? You mean..."

"Yes... the blade of which I speak is no mere _weapon, _not like those we wield," Ansem said, pausing for a moment and then turning toward the boy. "It draws out its chosen wielder's potential to its fullest... no, far beyond. Even an ordinary man could change the world if such power chose to entrust itself to him..."

Riku stared up at the varying images of the mythical weapon-_-_some formed with twin swords, others with something resembling axes, spears, or staves, but all with what appeared to be a third blade of light erupting from the point where the two crossed and an interlacing pattern of energy radiating outward to its sides. The power of the Keyblades the Elementals wielded seemed impressive enough to him, and even the mass-produced Keyblades made the average soldier more than a match in a fight against two or three Fangirls they would be far too weak to handle without it; could this "χ-Blade" really be so much greater? He found it difficult to even imagine.

"This is why I chose to abandon my search for it and construct our lesser Keyblades in its place... the power of the χ-Blade is like that of a god. Such power should remain in the pages of history for all eternity, if it ever truly existed to begin with... it is not something those such as us are meant to possess."

* * *

As the Keybearers cleared out of the mess hall, young Sora rushed off down the hallway he had seen Riku go down earlier, hoping to catch up to his friend before he was out of sight. Unfortunately for him, however, Riku was nowhere to be seen; the spiky-haired boy peeked into the armory for a moment as he passed it, but saw only Zagan standing over by the racks of Keyblades.

"Oh, hey Zagan," Sora said, walking up to him. "What're you doing in here?"

"Eh, nothing much really... just taking a look at all these different Keyblades. You know Keyblade Masters get to design their own, right?"

The boy's face seemed to light up, apparently no longer feeling so down about his failure to attain Keyblade Master status on his first attempt.

"Whoa, really? So does that mean Riku's gonna make his own Keyblade now?"

"Most likely," he said, shrugging. "Who knows how long it'll take for them to finish working on it, though. He's the first new Keyblade Master since I got here."

Sora paused for a moment, looking around at the racks of Keyblades and completely missing the fact that one rack was completely empty, just as it had been when he had been brought in to choose his own Keyblade just days ago. He then turned back toward Zagan, who was now standing near the room's entrance as if pondering whether he should go do something else.

"Hey, are you gonna be busy later?"

Zagan turned his head, glancing down at Sora over his shoulder.

"Nah, not really," he said, "Why?"

"Well, I was gonna go find Riku and do some training," he answered, "But it sounds like he'll be busy for a while making his new Keyblade, so... do you think I could train with you instead?"

For a second, Zagan paused; he then smirked slightly before turning back toward Sora.

"No problem. I'll be working on the Fangirl Detection System for a while, but I should be able to help you out in a few hours."

He turned and headed out the door, with Sora following a few steps behind him. After a few steps, he seemed to notice this fact and glanced back toward the boy as he walked; when the two came to the next intersection in the hallway and Sora turned down the left path to part ways with his older companion, Zagan unexpectedly turned back toward him and spoke once again.

"By the way," he said, causing Sora to halt and glance back toward him. "There's something I've been wanting to ask you. Any chance you ever hear... ah, how to put this... voices in your head?"

Sora turned and looked at him like he was crazy, not sure what he was talking about.

"Voices in my head?", he said, scratching his head slightly and continuing to look very confused. "What kind of weird question is that?"

Zagan laughed slightly.

"Well, I guess I'm kind of a weird guy," he said, adjusting his glasses slightly and then grinning. "But anyway... it's just a harmless question. What about it? Anything like that ever happened to you?"

Sora paused and stared down at his feet, trying hard to remember if there had ever been a time when he had heard voices he couldn't explain. This was made even more difficult due to the fact that there seemed to be a huge gap in his memory, starting with the moment his boat was overturned during the Fangirl swarm and not ending until the day that Zagan had found him lying unconscious on a beach somewhere. After a while, he turned back toward Zagan with his answer.

"Once or twice, I think," he said, "The night after I came here."

"That's all?"

"Yeah," the boy said, "All I can remember, anyway. I guess my memory's kind of messed up..."

Zagan paused for a moment, stroking his beard, and then shrugged before lightly patting Sora on the head and then walking off down the hallway.

"Eh, don't think about it too much," he said, quickly leaving Sora behind. "It was just a silly question, after all. You've got more important things to worry about... like that training session in a few hours. Don't forget about that, okay?"

Sora nodded, smiling slightly; the mention of training, and the possibility that he might someday have another shot at the Mark of Mastery exam and the new Keyblade that came with it, immediately took his mind off of Zagan's unexpected question. He briefly waved goodbye, then took off down the other hallway, his oversized shoes squeaking all the way.

* * *

Several days had passed since the return of Roxas to the Organization, and for the most part things were finally beginning to return to normal. The four men tasked to retrieve the missing Number Thirteen had each taken a day off to rest and tend to their wounds after the battles that had taken place within the unknown depths of the Internet, while Roxas himself was granted an almost uncharacteristically generous period of vacation time by Xemnas so as to ensure that he recovered fully before going back to any strenuous work such as wiping out Fangirls.

Lexaeus had resumed his work in the Fangirl Detection System room, helping Naminé during her shift as well as taking over for her during those times when she was off duty. Marluxia had recieved a new cloak and returned to his usual post in the sickbay, a bit stunned by the sheer amount of notes regarding the condition of his various patients that Slobodan and Estera had taken while he was away. Kisaki, who had unexpectedly fallen unconscious sometime during their return trip, now seemed to be back to normal once again; Marluxia was a bit worried that she did not seem to remember the brief period of consciousness that came between her two fainting spells, but as she insisted that she felt fine and nothing else had happened for days after she had recovered, he didn't push for any further testing.

Zexion had recorded a full report of his trip to the Internet and back and provided a copy of it to Xemnas and another to Vexen for analysis, adding a third to the Organization's archives and of course keeping the original writing in his book along with nearly everything else Organization-related that he had ever written down. Though he was glad to finally be home, there was one downside-_-_now that his duty in investigating Roxas' disappearance was done, he had no excuse to further postpone training sessions with Kisaki, and the next one had already been scheduled and was barely a day away. Vexen, as usual, was already hard at work with his continued research; he had first added detailed profiles of the four abnormal Fangirls they had encountered to his own databases as well as the main computer of the Fangirl Detection System, and was now standing in the sickbay alongside Marluxia, watching Roxas as the boy sat upright in his bed, reading through what appeared to be a video game strategy guide.

"It seems Number Thirteen has recovered quickly, as always," Vexen said, turning to Marluxia. "How has he been these past few days since his return from the Internet? No permanent damage, I presume?"

"Nothing I've been able to find," Marluxia said, looking over the notes that Slobodan and Estera had left him on Roxas' condition during his first day of recovery. "His energy had been almost completely drained away when you brought him in, but apparently whatever the Fangirls did to him in there didn't take anything from him that he wasn't able to recover on his own with a few good nights of sleep."

"Good to hear," Vexen said. "Now, do you think there would be any problem if I asked him a few questions?"

Marluxia shook his head slightly.

"Not at all. He seems surprisingly sane for someone who's been trapped in the Internet for so long... I'm sure he wouldn't mind."

Vexen walked over toward Roxas' bed, pulling up a chair alongside it and sitting down. The boy finally noticed his presence at that moment, lowering the book and glancing over at him.

"Hello Roxas," he said, producing a small pad of paper from one of his cloak's pockets and preparing to write something down. "Would you mind if I asked you a few things about your experiences in the Internet?"

"Well... I'd like to forget all about it," he said, sighing slightly, "But I guess it's too late for that now. Go ahead."

"First of all... what, exactly, were the Fangirls hoping to gain from your captivity? Considering Zagan's involvement, I'm sure there were more than simple Fangirlish motives involves."

"I'm not sure," Roxas answered, hesitating a bit. "I... I saw the Fangirl Queen... doing something with these weird pod things hanging from the walls... and I remember always feeling so weak, but..."

He paused for a few moments, then suddenly remembered something.

"Zagan was there... he said something about creating male Fangirls. I think that must have been what they were using my energy for."

Vexen nodded, writing something down in his notebook.

"Hmm... so your stolen power somehow enabled the creation of the first Fanboys," he said, flipping to the next page. "I suspect that Xion's existence within you may have had something to do with that... the combination of the two of your powers may very well be the first time that Fangirl energy and a male body have coexisted."

"There's more," Roxas said, remembering another thing he had failed to mention before. "Most of the pods the Fangirl Queen had were the same, but there was one... way up on the ceiling, past all the others. It had some kind of symbol on it, but I never got a close enough look to say for sure what it was."

"And did you, by chance, get a glimpse of what was in this pod?"

"I never saw any of them open," he said, shaking his head. "But this one... it was completely different from the others. Didn't you guys see it when you came in?"

"We did indeed see quite a few of these pods you've mentioned attached to the walls of the rooms... but there was no pod marked with a strange symbol at the highest point of the ceiling, as you have described."

"Then that means..."

"Yes," Vexen said, anticipating the rest of Roxas' sentence before he had a chance to finish. "That means that whatever was inside that pod... has already been released."

Vexen was silent for a while, writing down all the details he had learned as well as making a quick sketch of what he remembered the dangling pods in the core of the Internet looking like. He then looked back to Roxas, asking one last question.

"Now, about Zagan," he said, "Do you know anything about his present location? Have Irael and D'aal ever appeared in the Internet alongside him, or is he always alone?"

"He only came into the Internet occasionally... I don't know where he went when he left," Roxas answered. "And he was always alone, or with Fangirls... I never saw those guys with him."

Vexen put his hand to his chin, apparently intrigued by the thought that only one of the three traitors was associated with the Fangirls. He wondered what that meant for the other two-_-_were they working with Zagan but simply choosing to stay outside the Internet, or were they completely unaware of his connections to the Fangirl Queen? And if so, where were they, and what was _their _motivation for leaving the Organization the way they did?

"Interesting..."

After a few more quick notes, Vexen stood back up and tucked his notepad back into one of his cloak's pockets, walking past Roxas' bed and toward the door.

"Thank you for your cooperation, Roxas," he said, turning back for a moment before leaving the room. "However... I must be going. Zexion and I have some further research to do on those Fanboys, now that we know of their origins..."

* * *

Vexen and Zexion headed down the hallway toward the older man's basement laboratory, which had barely been touched since before its owner had gone off to enter the Internet. The two stopped right in front of the lab, Vexen glancing toward the younger man for a moment before turning his attention to the heavy double-doors that marked the lab's entrance.

"I believe the one we were able to bring in is of the type we are tentatively calling 'Haters,'" Vexen said, opening the door and heading in to the lab with Zexion following not far behind. "Based on our recent encounters with them, they appear to be larger and more muscular than other Fanboys, with an unhealthy obsession with their hatred for a particular member of our Organization."

"Right," Zexion said, nodding. "Like the one that jumped at Lexaeus inside the Internet, screaming all sorts of nonsense at him until the moment it was destroyed."

Vexen nodded in response, then walked over to a rarely-used corner of the lab and slid a bookcase out of its usual position. He then pressed a button on the wall that had previously been hidden behind the bookcase, causing the floor to slide open and reveal a staircase leading to one of the many hidden rooms connected to the laboratory.

"Estera, Slobodan, and I placed the Fanboy in confinement down here when we returned from that mission... though it was restrained, we did provide it with sources of both food and water, so it should have easily survived this long."

The two walked down the stairs in single file, eventually reaching the dimly-lit room at the bottom of the stairs. Along the walls were a series of cages large enough to hold the typical Fangirl; a creature as large as a Hater Fanboy would have fit as well, but only barely. Vexen paced back and forth between the cages for a few moments, soon becoming more and more frustrated; he was sure that there was no way the creature could have possibly escaped, and yet there was no sign of it anywhere in the room.

"Impossible," the old scientist muttered, "There's no damage to any part of the cage, and no Internet connection for it to have escaped through... how could this have happened?"

"Someone must have let it out," Zexion said, putting his hand to his chin. "Either that, or it died in here, but..."

"Two unlikely possibilities," Vexen interrupted, unlocking one of the cages and swinging it open. "It hasn't been long enough for starvation to have killed such a creature yet, and if someone else _was _here, either you or I would be able to sense at least a trace of their energy signature in this room."

Zexion briefly sniffed the air, but all he could detect was the overwhelming scent that always came along with the presence of Fangirls; the Fanboy was no different, its difference in gender apparently not changing much about how traces of its energy smelled to Zexion.

"That's strange," he said, taking a step past Vexen and into the open cage. "This room... the whole thing's absolutely saturated with the scent of Fangirls. Going by the dust on that cage's floor, though, the captive Fanboy has been gone for days... far too long for such a powerful trace of it to be left behind."

Vexen's eyes bulged slightly as he turned toward Zexion, looking a bit shocked.

"Are you suggesting that some other source of a Fangirlish energy signature was behind this one's escape?"

"It's possible," Zexion said, glancing around the cage he was now standing in and sniffing around a bit more. "Of course, a Fangirl energy signature entering the base would trigger a Fangirl alarm in an instant... but according to Roxas, Zagan managed to sneak some in around the alarm before."

"Still, Fangirls risking their lives for a single one of the swarm seems unlikely," Vexen said, pacing around a bit outside of the cages. "When have Fangirls as a whole _ever _shown concern for individuals among the hivemind before?"

"Perhaps Zagan's controlling them somehow," Zexion said, summoning his book and jotting down a few brief notes about the current situation before continuing. "If he does have some sort of connection to the Fangirl Queen, it's possible that he knew through the hivemind that this one was being held here and decided to sneak more Fangirls in to free it, simply to keep us from learning more about them."

There was a brief pause as Zexion thought about it further; after a few seconds, the blue-haired man gasped, apparently thinking of something that shocked him so much he was unable to hold it back. He then turned toward Vexen and spoke.

"Or... there is one more possibility," he began, "Though I sincerely hope this isn't the case."

"And that is?"

"The only other way such a strong Fangirl presence could enter the base, free this captive Fanboy, and not be detected by the security systems in the process... is if they've somehow infiltrated us."


	28. A Moment's Pause

**CHAPTER 27**  
_~ A Moment's Pause ~_

Ansem walked into a previously-unused room of the Keybearers' underground headquarters, following just a few feet behind Zagan. As soon as the room's contents became visible, the old man gasped; standing right before him was a wall full of computer equipment, with various screens and all sorts of intricate systems behind them that he could barely imagine the function of.

"Whaddya think?", Zagan asked, adjusting his glasses and turning toward him. "It's not quite as fancy as the one the Organization had just yet, but it works... and with a couple more days of work I should have all the wires and such covered up and everything integrated together."

"So," Ansem said, staring around at the roomful of technology with an almost stunned expression still stuck on his face, "This must be... the 'Fangirl Detection System' you spoke of?"

"Yep, that's right."

"But... it hasn't even been a _week _since you started on this! How could you possibly have..."

Zagan grinned, then paced over to one of the chairs (ordinary wooden ones borrowed from the old church above, in the absence of the rolling chairs he would usually use) and sat down, turning on the system and rapidly typing in a few startup commands so quickly that Ansem's eyes could hardly follow the movement of his fingers. Within seconds, every screen connected to the system began to light up, and maps of all different areas of the world came to life, accompanied by several screens full of data on recent Fangirl activity and results from past exterminations (currently empty, as none had yet been entered into this system.) Ansem's eyes widened even further; he simply couldn't imagine how Zagan managed to construct such a thing in so little time, especially considering that he started with nothing more than the blueprints and his memories of how the original system built by the Organization had functioned.

"Well... you could say I'm a bit of a technological genius," Zagan said, typing a few more things into the system. "Plus, I had some help from a few of the guys from over in the radio room while they were off duty. You didn't think I did all this work by _myself, _did you?"

Ansem just stared in wonder as the system rapidly scanned all over the world for the presence of Fangirls. Unlike the methods the Keybearers had been using up until now, this system picked up not only major swarms but every last individual Fangirl, as it soon demonstrated by the appearance of a single pink dot somewhere in the southwestern United States. The dot moved around a bit, then flickered out and disappeared from the screen, presumably vanishing into the Internet. Zagan typed something else into the system, and suddenly one of the maps zoomed in on their present location, showing exactly where each of the hundreds of Keybearers were located within the base at that very moment. Several of them were individually marked, with the Elementals and Riku each having symbols of a different color than the usual dull metallic gold of the ordinary soldiers. Ansem himself was marked by a dark red symbol with some of the other details from his robes, while Zagan, Irael, and D'aal each had black outlines of their other weapons overlaid atop their symbols to differentiate them from the other Keybearers.

"I've got the power signatures of the Organization programmed in here, too," he said, bringing up a list of every individual symbol used on the system's displays. "See, these right here with the Roman numerals are the numbered members... like Xemnas and Vexen."

Ansem sat down in one of the other chairs, tentatively poking at the controls in front of him in an attempt to figure out exactly how they worked. He noticed an especially large button with a wire that didn't seem to connect to anything, then turned to Zagan.

"This is all very interesting," he said, "And no doubt will be useful to the mission of the Keybearers in the future. However, I must ask... what is the purpose of this button?"

"Oh, _that _one?", Zagan said, glancing down at the large, red button. "Well... it doesn't do anything just yet. But when I get a few more things set up, that'll be the way to set off the Fangirl alarm... set it off and everybody in here will know there's a swarm somewhere."

"Ah," Ansem said, looking away from the disconnected button and back to the screen. "And these blank fields of data... what are _they _for?"

"Scan results," Zagan immediately answered, not even looking at the screen Ansem was asking about. "The system can run a more-detailed scan on a Fangirl swarm and let you know if there's any specific Fangirls out there to worry about, instead of just the numbers and average strength of the whole bunch."

Ansem nodded, standing up slowly and continuing to stare at the various screens in front of him. He had a hard time pulling himself away from them; this was, quite simply, the single most impressive piece of anti-Fangirl technology he had seen since the invention of the Keyblade itself. Eventually, he managed to turn away, then slowly walked toward the exit of the room.

"I will have to assign several of our more technologically-inclined members to monitor this system at once," he said, turning his head back toward Zagan as he reached the door. "Unless, of course, _you _would like to volunteer for the job?"

Zagan laughed, turning around in his chair.

"Oh no, you don't want _me _in here all the time," he said, still laughing a bit and rapidly gesturing with his hands as he stood back up and walked toward him. "I mean, how am I going to go for the Mark of Mastery if I'm holed up in here all the time instead of out there fighting and training?"

"Ah... a good point," Ansem said, smiling slightly. "Though I don't believe it would be wise to allow new recruits to seek Keyblade Master status so soon... I suppose your past Fangirl-fighting experience would weigh the scale in your favor."

"Wait a second," Zagan said, pausing for a bit as if surprised, "Do you mean... you're going to let me take the exam sometime soon?"

Ansem nodded.

"Yes, I was indeed considering that option," he answered, walking back toward the younger Keybearer as he spoke. "Sora was quite impressed by your skill with the Keyblade during your recent training sessions together, as were other Keybearers who had been watching... so much so that they came to me afterward to recommend you as a candidate for the Mark of Mastery."

For a moment, Zagan was silent. He then smiled slightly before abruptly bowing down in front of the elder Keybearer, an exaggerated sign of respect that Ansem didn't know any better than to take at face value.

"Thank you for this opportunity... Master Ansem."

* * *

Meanwhile in the Organization's base, several training sessions were underway at once, and the large room used for such things was beginning to become a bit chaotic as a result. Axel and Mæja were taking up a quarter of the room, but every few seconds a bullet deflected off of Axel's chakrams would go whizzing through the air, often forcing one of the other members to dodge out of the way or deflect it once again to avoid being hit. Mæja's skill at summoning and using her weapon seemed to have improved incredibly since the last time the other members present had seen her in action; she no longer required the aid of a Zero Gear to call forth her weapon, which resembled a flintlock pistol, and though she had not yet discovered her other powers, her aim and rate of fire had advanced to a point where Axel actually had to take things fairly seriously to avoid being hit.

On the opposite side of the room, Zexion was hard at work attempting to train Kisaki, who was (as usual) not cooperating very well. Xigbar sat on the sidelines and just watched, occasionally snickering a bit at her antics; at the moment, she seemed to be avoiding Zexion's illusion attacks quite well, but after dodging out of the way of the latest barrage of semi-solid energy blasts she chose to tackle Zexion to the ground and then play with his hair rather than seriously attacking. The blue-haired man managed to squeeze himself out from under her, shaking off his feelings of disgust long enough to shroud himself in another illusion and create several duplicates of himself to distract his trainee for a while.

In the middle was Larxene, finally recovered enough to be released from the sickbay and now training not one but _two _of the non-numbered members that had been assigned to her. One of the two men was the one she had pummeled in an earlier training session before any actual training could begin; this time, thankfully, he seemed to be keeping his poorly-thought-out comments to himself for the moment and thus was still standing. The other was a skinny dark-skinned man with a short, scruffy beard; unlike his fellow trainee, he wore the full uniform of the Organization rather than only a simple black shirt and pants, showing that he had already undergone enough training to activate either his weapon or powers already.

"Okay, you two," Larxene said, putting her hands on her hips and glaring at her trainees. They immediately took deep breaths and focused their attention on their superior officer, neither one of them wanting to incur the brunt of her wrath in the next series of attacks. "It's about time for some _real_ training. I'm not going to hold back so much of my speed anymore... just _try _to land a hit on me."

The two men braced themselves, the dark-skinned one getting into what resembled a loose combat stance while the other just held his fists up awkwardly. A few moments later, Larxene smiled, and in a rush of wind she was gone. Each of her trainees glanced around the room in an attempt to track her down, but neither of them could see her as much more than an occasional black blur in their peripheral vision. Suddenly, one of the two spotted her suddenly slowing to a stop behind the other, yelling out his name.

"Donny, look out!"

He turned his head suddenly, just in time to see Larxene standing behind him and flashing her trademark evil grin. He spun around and took a swing at her, but before his fist could make contact she was gone, reappearing behind him and planting her left knee into his back. He crashed to the floor immediately, falling flat on his face and groaning in pain.

"Oh," the blonde said, waving one finger disapprovingly. "So you _weren't _ready for that after all. I guess I forgot to mention... I'm not just going to run around dodging your attacks this time."

Her other trainee raised one of his hands above his head, causing swirls of energy to surround it for a few moments before solidifying into one of his weapons-_-_a single nunchuck, each link in its chain shaped like the cross-points of the Organization's symbol, with small X-shaped projections on the ends of each stick. He held the weapon by one of the sticks, spinning it rapidly overhead, then lunged at Larxene and whipped it toward her while her back was turned. Unfortunately for him, what had appeared to be his superior officer was nothing more than an after-image left behind in her wake, and the real Larxene quickly appeared behind him, grabbing onto his arm as he raised it once again and halting the nunchuck's movement before it had a chance to pick up speed. She then gently spun him around by the arm, almost appearing as if she was _dancing _with her trainee... that is, until she smashed him right in the face with a sudden headbutt, sending him staggering backward.

For a minute or so afterward, Larxene actually stood still, tapping her foot on the floor impatiently as she watched her two trainees recover from the attacks she had dealt them. Donny had only just then managed to pull himself up off of the floor, rubbing his back and grumbling all sorts of obscenities under his breath; his companion had fared better, only having to clutch his nose long enough to stem the flow of blood before he was ready to go again, grabbing hold of both of his weapon's handles and holding the chain out in front of him.

Meanwhile on Zexion's side of the room, it seemed that Kisaki had finally gotten the silliness out of her system; she had now summoned her spear and was rapidly lunging at each of the illusion doppelgangers that Zexion sent after her, usually destroying each one with a single strike. This continued for a while, with more and more false Zexions surrounding her until she was barely able to keep up with them all; then, each of the clones suddenly held out one hand and created an exact copy of Kisaki's weapon out of swirling, translucent purplish-blue energy.

"Aww... that's not fair," Kisaki whined, glancing around at the now heavily-armed Zexions that surrounded her in a perfect circular formation, wielding their spears like highly-disciplined Roman soldiers rather than wildly flailing them like Kisaki herself usually did. "I've gotta fight a whole _army _of Zexies?"

Xigbar barely held back laughter, pounding one of his knees with his fist; he had almost gotten used to hearing Zexion's trainee refer to him by that nickname, but this was the first time he had ever heard it used in the plural.

"Heh heh... Zexies," he mumbled to himself, grinning from one pointed ear to the other. "I've gotta remember that one..."

Kisaki leaped forward flailed her spear at several of the Zexions, only to find that they were now capable of blocking her attacks with their own copies of her weapon. She jumped back just in time to avoid their attacks, soon finding that they were beginning to advance inward toward her. For a few moments, she just glanced around at the illusory army as they approached; by the time she had a spear pointed at her from a few feet away in every direction, she heard Zexion's voice speaking from somewhere outside the range of the illusion.

"You can't handle this many with just your weapon," he said, sighing slightly before continuing. "You're going to have to learn how to unleash your powers consciously, or you're going to wind up getting hurt before too long."

Kisaki's eyes widened; this was the first time since her last training session with Xigbar that she had actually felt as if she was in any real danger. She thought back to that time, when she had suddenly been elbowed in the back of the head by the elf before she had a chance to react; she couldn't remember what happened immediately afterward, but the next thing she knew, one of her hands was outstretched and Xigbar was slumped up against the wall with his cloak unexpectedly transformed into a sparkly dress. Her eyes flashed red for a moment as she remembered the sneak-attack that had apparently caused her powers to surface for the first time, then held one of her hands out in the direction of a cluster of incoming Zexion-clones. For a few moments, nothing happened; as the spears advanced ever closer, however, a chaotic green aura surrounded her hand before spreading out across her entire body. Just as before, something about the air changed, and an intense low-pitched buzzing sound caused Xigbar to cover his sensitive elven ears.

Behind the veil of his illusion, the real Zexion's eyes widened. This was _not_ what he had been expecting; from the looks of the energy rapidly building up around her, the blast that was coming was going to be _much _more powerful than the one she had caught Xigbar off guard with before. He backed away from the outer edge of the ring of illusion-Zexions slowly, holding his open book in one hand and keeping his powers concentrated on maintaining the illusion even as he moved all the way back to the bleachers on the far end of the wall. Not long afterward, the raging green aura around Kisaki condensed itself into several basketball-sized orbs of energy which rapidly spun outward from her position, slamming into the spears of the many Zexions and shattering them instantly. Despite being only illusions in the first place, the broken fragments rapidly transformed into chunks of various other materials before flickering away and disappearing into thin air. The Zexion clones soon followed, each one of them being sent flying backward before dissolving away into flashes of blue and purple energy before vanishing entirely.

Kisaki blinked a few times, then laughed nervously, dematerializing her weapon and walking over to the place where the real Zexion was sitting. He sighed and closed his book, then dematerialized it and stood back up just as his trainee sat down (uncomfortably close) beside him.

"Well... I suppose that means training's over for today," he said, distancing himself from Kisaki a bit before continuing. "And at the rate you're going, it won't be long before you'll be through with these regularly scheduled training sessions... based on that last attack, there's not much more I'd be able to teach you."

"Ooh," Kisaki said, hopping back to her feet and rushing over to Zexion's side once again. "Does that mean I get to be Number Fourteen?"

Zexion shook his head.

"There is no Number Fourteen," he said, "The Organization has only thirteen numbered ranks, and at the moment all of them are occupied. And besides... even when your combat training is complete, you'll still need to take Vexen's classes on Fangirls and the duties of the Organization."

"Classes?", she said, looking a bit confused. "You mean like... some kind of Organization school?"

"That... isn't exactly the wording I would use," Zexion answered, rubbing his forehead slightly and taking another few steps away as Kisaki once again got a bit too close to him. "But essentially... yes, you could call them 'Organization school.' There are two courses, each two months long and required for every new member... and if I recall correctly, you have yet to attend even a single session."

Kisaki groaned, apparently not too pleased by the thought of having to go back to school so soon after having finally gotten out of high school barely more than a year prior to her joining the Organization. Eventually, however, she nodded with understanding and hugged Zexion tightly (once again forcing his face down into her breasts, whether he liked it or not) before skipping off toward the training room's nearest exit to the tune of yet another outburst of laughter from Xigbar.

* * *

"So that's it, then," Saix said, sitting with his arms crossed at a small table along with Xemnas and Vexen. "Fangirl forces have managed to find some way to infiltrate our ranks... and not even the Fangirl Detection System can pinpoint them?"

"I don't know for sure," the old scientist answered, not wanting to jump to conclusions so soon. "But yes, that is a possibility. What I _am_ certain of is that a powerful Fangirlish presence had entered the base sometime quite recently and freed the captive Fanboy I was keeping in my laboratory."

Xemnas took a sip of his coffee, then glanced over at Vexen and spoke for the first time.

"So," he said, "What do you suppose can be done to solve this problem?"

Vexen sighed.

"To be perfectly honest... nothing immediately comes to mind," he said, glancing down at the table in front of him. He took a quick drink of his own coffee and a bite of an avocado he had brought alone, then suddenly seemed to get an idea.

"Perhaps if we could run an in-depth scan on each of our members," he said, setting down his food and drink immediately as the thought came to him. "Yes... if whatever has managed to sneak its way into our base is indeed disguising itself as one of our own, then it's possible that a more powerful scan might pick up subtler Fangirl energy traces that the ordinary method missed."

"That's right," Saix said, thinking back to a few times he had been present in the Fangirl Detection System room when scans had been run. "The full scan always seems to reveal some things that ordinary scans miss..."

Xemnas smiled slightly.

"Indeed. And with a full scan, it should be possible to sweep the entire base at once... which means there is no need to speak of this to the others."

Vexen glared slightly in his direction.

"And why not?"

Saix glared back, answering before the Superior himself had the chance to say a word.

"Whatever is hiding among us can't be allowed to know a scan is coming," he said, pausing for a moment and glancing toward Xemnas before continuing. "Whatever sort of Fangirl this is, it has the ability to conceal its presence from our scanners... if we announce this to everyone, it might be able to avoid even the maximum-strength scan."

The Organization's head scientist paused, taking another drink of coffee. He then nodded slightly before speaking.

"True... I hadn't considered the possibility that even the full scan could be avoided," he said, munching away at his avocado between sentences. "We don't even know _how _this creature avoids detection... so perhaps an unannounced scan is the best option we have of catching this Fangirl and its powers of concealment off guard."

"It is decided," Xemnas said, emptying the last of his coffee before standing up from the table. "Number Four, you are to begin the full scan of the entire base tomorrow afternoon, just after the cafeteria is cleared out following lunch."

Vexen nodded in response, quickly wolfing down the last of his avocado and washing it down with what little was left of his coffee. Saix followed suit, rapidly draining his own cup, and soon all three of the black-cloaked men were standing. Xemnas turned and took a few steps toward the nearest door, stopping just a few steps short and turning back to address Vexen once again.

"One more thing," he said, "Be sure that no member who joined our Organization more recently than July of this year is present in the Fangirl Detection System's room during this scan."

"Of course," Vexen said, nodding once again. "Those who joined after Zagan first began his visits to the Internet would be our primary suspects in this case."

* * *

Roxas sat on a couch in one of the Organization's recreation rooms, a video game controller clasped tightly in his hands and his thumbs moving furiously as the sounds of music, explosions, and battle cries rang out from the rather large television positioned barely ten feet in front of him. Sitting alongside him on the couch were Demyx and Banbu, while Michiko sat on the floor; all three held the same sort of controllers as their spiky-haired friend, and all seemed to be just as focused on the game as he was.

"Yeah!", Demyx suddenly shouted out, "Gotcha!"

"Not yet," Roxas said, gritting his teeth as his character on the screen suddenly surrounded himself with a barrier of energy just in time to deflect Demyx's attack effortlessly. "Check _this _out!"

The barrier then exploded outward, sending Demyx's character flying into a nearby wall and then falling onto the floor unconscious.

"Awww, man!", the musician groaned, letting his controller slip out of his hand and fall onto the couch alongside him as he slumped down in his seat. "I'm not very good at this game, huh?"

"Hey, you almost had 'im that time," Banbu said, mashing one of the buttons rapidly so that his character lashed out repeatedly at those controlled by both Roxas and Michiko. "One second too slow and he would've been toast!"

Michiko grunted slightly in annoyance as she found that she was unable to break out of the combo attack Banbu's character had caught her in, just waiting until she too was thrown backward and knocked out cold on the floor. For a few minutes afterward, the two youngest of the group clashed in a battle of epic proportions, ignoring the fact that it was all nothing more than an image on a television screen; eventually, however, Roxas was defeated, and with a sigh he plopped his controller down on the couch and reached for a slice of watermelon from the plate sitting on a small table in front of the group.

"That was close," Banbu said, putting his controller down and watching the game's image shift to a page of battle results that slowly scrolled across the screen. "You're getting pretty good at this one, Roxas."

Roxas laughed slightly.

"Yeah, and in a few more days I'm finally gonna beat you," he said, shaking the controller toward the smaller boy jokingly. "I mean, we've only had this game since I've been back here... you never know which one of us might come out on top once we get more practice."

Michiko gathered up the controllers and sat them on the stand where the TV was located, turning the game off and plopping down on the couch alongside the other three while glancing down at the box of the very game they had just been playing. The front cover was filled up by a variety of black-cloaked figures much like the four who were playing it, each making different faces and holding weapons of all kinds; though not all of the details matched up quite right with reality, the game did indeed seem to have been based on Organization XIII.

"I _still _can't believe somebody actually made a game based on us," the green-haired girl said, staring down at the box in her hands. "They even got most of the numbered members in there, though the names are all wrong... the only one they're missing is Xemnas."

"Yeah... I guess the big boss's never been caught on camera," Demyx said, glancing over at the box's cover and snickering slightly at the somewhat warped depiction of himself. Rather than his trademark blue sitar, the game's version of the musician wielded a shiny black electric guitar with what appeared to be wave and lightning-bolt patterns painted on it in several places.

"Y'know," Banbu said, glancing over to the rest of the group, "This's probably a good thing. I mean, if everybody associates Organization XIII with this game, people won't know we really exist."

"Good point," Roxas said between bites of watermelon, nodding. "The government _would _look pretty silly if they were caught spending tons of money on plans to capture video game characters."

"Yeah," Demyx added, "It's like how a lot of people don't believe in Bigfoot anymore because of all the dumb hoaxes. You never hear about the feds going out and looking for Bigfoot, right?"

Each of the group who didn't already have one grabbed a slice of watermelon and then proceeded to just sit back on the couch and relax; Roxas waited for a little while and then took a second slice, as his first one was almost entirely gone by this point. For a moment, the spiky-haired blonde thought back to the events of the past few weeks and sighed; finally, after all he had been through, he was able to have a normal day again.


	29. Back to School

**CHAPTER 28**  
_~ Back to School ~_

_"Roxas,"_ Xion's voice called out as if attempting to shake him out of a deep sleep. _"Roxas, wake up! The Fangirls... they've..."_

Before she could finish her sentence, the sound of a Fangirl alarm began to blare throughout the base... and then, just as quickly as it had begun, the sound changed its tone and volume entirely and faded away into an annoying little high-pitched beep.

_Beep. Beep. Beep. Beep..._

Roxas woke up, as he did every day, to the sound of his alarm clock blaring that same annoying tone over and over. The voice in his head, the warning, the image of some sprawling underground complex and the sound of an alarm going off... it had all been just a dream. There were no voices in his head now, and his surroundings were far more ordinary-_-_a messy bedroom, with clothes strewn across the floor and furniture that hadn't been dusted off in weeks, appropriate for someone his age.

He groaned and turned the offending alarm clock off, then tossed his covers aside and climbed out of bed before scooping his school uniform up from the floor where he had left it the night before and hurriedly putting it back on. After scarfing down a quick breakfast, brushing his teeth, and packing his backpack with the handful of books he would need for the day, he grabbed his lunchbox and rushed out the door, heading off to school... just like any other day.

The trip to Thirteenth District High was never a long one-_-_the school had, rather conveniently, installed apartments on the upper floors of the very same building where most classes were held, making it easy for the lazier students to sleep in until the last possible minute and yet still manage to get there on time. Roxas didn't even have to go outside to get there; a few flights of stairs and some brief walks down hallways, and he had arrived at Mr. Rimewind's science classroom.

Just before reaching the door, he suddenly noticed a smaller boy with spiky black hair headed straight toward him; if his reflexes had been just a split-second slower, they would have smacked into each other, but fortunately Roxas was able to take a step back and alert the other kid to his presence before that happened.

"Hey," the spiky-haired boy said, breathing a bit heavily and looking like he was having trouble carrying the weight of his overstuffed backpack. "Is this Biology with Mr. Rimewind?"

"Yeah," Roxas said, glancing into the open door in front of him before turning back to the boy. "Are you new here, or something?"

The boy nodded.

"Yeah, I just transferred in, and this is my first day here," he said, grinning and scratching his head. "I kinda got lost on the way over... oh yeah, I almost forgot to ask, what's your name?"

"Uh... Roxas," he said, pausing for a moment before figuring that it might be better to give the new kid his full name. "Roxas Siru."

"Roxas, huh? That's a weird name. Mine's Yoshi!"

Yoshi then rushed into the classroom before Roxas could say or do anything else, quickly picking a seat near the front of the class. As it turned out, this was not far from where Roxas usually sat; after standing in the hallway and watching other students file in for a few seconds, he shrugged and headed in as well, taking his usual seat.

The class went on as usual, though Mr. Rimewind (a surprisingly tall older man with long, dirty-blonde hair) seemed to be even more exhausted than usual; Roxas figured that the extra work due to being the school's only teacher for both math _and _science classes was finally beginning to catch up to him, as the dark circles under his eyes were even more noticeable than usual and he couldn't seem to get through half of the class period without pausing to drink large quantities of coffee. Before long, it was over, and as the students all wrote down their homework for the day their teacher slumped forward on his desk, mumbling something to himself about teacher's salaries and slave labor.

After the bell rang to mark the end of first-period classes, a deep voice suddenly came through over the intercom system; Roxas immediately recognized it as the voice of the school's principal, the dark-skinned, silver-haired man that most students only ever referred to as "the Principal," even if they knew his name.

"Good morning, students," he said, drawing out his words in a way that almost seemed excessive considering the subject of his speech. "This is your Sup-_-_I mean, _Principal _speaking... I am pleased to announce that on this day, you shall all attend a mandatory meeting in the gymnasium for the purpose of choosing which clubs and other activities you will participate in during the coming year."

Yoshi turned toward Roxas for a moment and whispered somewhat loudly.

"Whoa, good thing I got here when I did," he said, causing Roxas to turn slightly in his direction and hope their teacher wasn't listening. "I wouldn't wanna miss that!"

"Now," the principal continued, "You shall all leave your classes and proceed to the auditorium in an orderly manner."

The flow of uniform-wearing kids toward the gym was, of course, anything but orderly; students of all ages and sizes swarmed out of their classrooms and headed down the hallways in noisy, obnoxious crowds, somehow managing to do so despite the fact that there seemed to be less than fifty of them in all. Roxas wondered for a moment why such a large school had such a small student body, but the thought quickly left his head as Yoshi tugged on one of his sleeves.

"Hey, you've been here for a while, right? What kinda clubs 'n' stuff does this place have?"

"Well... we should probably go to the gym and see," he said, shrugging slightly. Yoshi nodded, and before long the two had joined the amorphous crowd of students barreling down the hallway toward the double-doors that lead to the gym.

Once inside, the two boys were handed signup sheets by several teachers manning the entrance, then were left to their own devices, free to wander through the room and talk to the representatives of the various clubs and extracurricular activities the school offered. Yoshi glanced around at the booths set up by the martial arts club, the chess club, and Lucha Libre, which was actually being operated by a man wearing what appeared to be a real Mexican wrestling mask; off on the other end of the room was a small makeshift stage set up for a student-run band, which apparently was named "Organization XIII." An older student with a mullet-like haircut seemed to be in charge over there, spinning a large stringed instrument around and playing fragments of various rock songs as people passed by.

"Hey, what's this?", Yoshi asked, pointing to a club name on the signup sheet that didn't seem to have a booth set up anywhere in the room. "Larxene's Secret Fun Club... I wonder what they do?"

Roxas shuddered; he was pretty sure that this particular club's activities broke at least a few school rules (if not national laws), and that it most likely only had such a vague name because something called the "Larxene and Saix Have Weird Sex in the Janitor's Closet Club" would never fly with the teachers. He wouldn't be surprised if Saix's status as student body president was the only reason the school allowed it now, even with the... less-descriptive name.

"You _don't _want to join that one," he said, pulling a pen out of one of his pockets and crossing it off the list on Yoshi's sheet. "Trust me."

"Aww, why not? It has 'fun' right there in the name!", Yoshi whined, attempting to erase the black mark with his pencil's eraser but finding out that this didn't do much but smudge the ink. "I bet they do all kinds of stuff, like play video games! And have go-kart races! And burping contests!"

"Err... no... I'm pretty sure they don't," Roxas said, shaking his head and walking away from the boy to head off in the direction of the martial arts club's table, where a teacher wearing his hair in many long braids was demonstrating some of his techniques for a small crowd of young students. "Come on, let's forget about that and go check out a few of the booths."

* * *

Zexion stood against the wall of the gym while the other students milled around at the various booths around the edges, flipping through the massive book that he somehow knew how to summon out of thin air. He couldn't remember how or where he had gained such a strange power, but as far as he could remember, he had always been able to do so. He had also always been able to write things on the book's pages with his mind by simply waving a hand over the paper, causing words to appear instantly, which made him wonder why the book seemed to be completely empty-_-_he had to have flipped through several dozen pages, and yet he had found nothing at all that had been written there previously.

"Hey Zexy," a girl's voice said from barely a foot away, "Whatcha doing?"

He glanced over in the direction of the voice and found a rather large-breasted girl staring right at him with a smile on her face, leaning in toward him as if trying to get a peek at what was in his book. Seeing little more than today's date written across the top of the page, she shrugged and quickly lost interest in it, though she continued to stand so close to Zexion that they were almost brushing up against each other.

"Ah... nothing much, Kisaki," he said, shrugging as well. "Just wondering about some things. Like my book... how is it that I can just summon a book out of nowhere like that?"

Kisaki giggled.

"What, did you forget already? Almost _everybody _here can do stuff like that, even the teachers!"

She was now leaning over onto him, her head resting on his shoulder. Some unconscious reaction made him flinch away a bit at first, but other than that he didn't react.

"Yes, I know that... I just can't remember _why, _if I ever knew at all."

Kisaki draped her arm over his other shoulder and hugged her smaller, blue-haired companion slightly, as if not concerned at all with the various questions he had. Apparently, she didn't find it unusual at all that there was a high school for people with unexplained superhuman powers located at the top of a mountain in Japan, or if she did she had gotten so used to it that it _seemed _ordinary to her.

"I wouldn't worry about it too much," she said, whispering into his ear and causing several younger students passing by to give the two some odd looks. "I mean, if you spend all your time worrying about weird stuff like that, won't your grades suffer?"

Zexion sighed.

"Yeah... I guess so," he mumbled, again barely fighting back an unexplainable instinctive urge to pull away from Kisaki despite the fact that the two had been dating for more than a year. "It's just... there's something really strange about this school, and I have to know what it is."

"Well... the Principal sure seems suspicious," Kisaki said, detaching herself from Zexion for a moment and stretching her arms slightly. "I mean, have you seen his eyes? They're so creepy!"

"Hmm... so you're saying that whatever's going on here, _he _might be responsible?"

Kisaki just shrugged.

"Nah," she said, smiling and beginning to fiddle with the hair that hung down in front of Zexion's face, which caused him to turn away slightly. "He's just kinda creepy-looking, that's all. You don't _really_ think anything weird's going on around here, do you?"

* * *

Xaldin sighed and sorted through the pile of papers in front of him, struggling to get them all graded and arranged before the club and activity meeting in the gym finished up and the next wave of students came pouring into his classroom. Just as he had reached the last of them, the bell rang, and he slapped his forehead with one hand and groaned. English wasn't even his first language-_-_so why in the name of all that is holy did the Principal give _him _the job as Thirteenth District High's only English teacher? He just didn't understand the school system's decisions sometimes.

_"Hey, could be worse,"_ he thought to himself as he rushed through the grading for the last essay, hoping he didn't miss anything obvious in the process. _"They could've piled _two _subjects on me like they did to poor Vexen... man, I feel sorry for that guy."_

Outside the room, the chatter of students approaching in the hallways rapidly grew closer and closer. Just a few minutes before the tardy bell was about to ring, a small crowd wandered into Xaldin's classroom, and he hurriedly sorted the papers into alphabetical order in preparation for handing them back.

"Aw, man," Demyx said, glancing over at a skinny spiky-haired boy and a rather overweight one with an afro. "You mean you guys couldn't get Slobodan to sign up for Lucha Libre? It'd be _perfect! _I mean, he's already got his own mask and everything!"

Axel shrugged and shook his head.

"Nah... the guy just wasn't interested," he said, glancing to the other two for a moment before continuing. "Honestly, I'm a little surprised _you_ bothered to sign up, Tundo. What, did you think it was a _sumo _wrestling club or something?"

"Hey! You callin' me fat, punk?"

"Break it up, _children,_" Zexion muttered, sighing at the antics of his fellow students as he walked past them and sat down in the front row. The other three who had entered before him headed straight toward the back, unsurprisingly.

"Lemme see," Xaldin mumbled to himself, looking over the roll sheet in front of him. "Axel, Demyx, Zexion, Tundo... okay, so we're just missin' Larxene, Marluxia, and Vi now. They've got another minute, then I'm gonna have to mark 'em late..."

He glanced back up to the classroom again and found that Larxene had inexplicably appeared in the room in the time it had taken him to glance down and mark her four fellow students present, apparently running into the room with such speed that he hadn't noticed her. He nodded slightly in her direction and marked her off as well, then turned toward the door and waited for any sign of the remaining two. At the last second, Vi came through the door; the tardy bell rang and still Marluxia was nowhere to be seen.

"Whoa," Demyx said, glancing around the room and finding no sign of his pink-haired classmate. "Where is that guy? He's _never _this late..."

Xaldin was about to close the door when suddenly the last missing student came sliding to a stop right in front of it, slipping through the door just as the sound of the bell finally stopped. This earned him a brief glare from the elven teacher, but still, he technically wasn't late, so he marked him present on the attendance sheet before returning to his desk.

"Okay, you guys," he said, scooping up the stack of essays and walking over to the front row of students to hand them out, "I _just _got done gradin' these things you turned in last week... lemme know if I marked anything wrong, I was in a hurry toward the end."

"Uh, Mr. Xaldin?", Demyx blurted out, raising one hand after the fact. "What if I... um... y'know... forgot to turn mine in? Because I think I kinda... did."

Xaldin turned toward him and frowned.

"I've told ya before," he said, walking over toward the back of the class where Demyx's desk was located. "I ain't _Mr. _Xaldin... just Xaldin. Elves don't use last names, remember?"

He plopped a graded paper onto his desk, then moved on to the next student on the list.

"Doesn't look like you forgot that paper after all," he said, "Must've been some other assignment you were thinkin' of there."

Demyx groaned; he knew he had forgotten to do _something,_ but he couldn't remember what. Axel snickered a bit, though this died down a bit when he flipped his paper over and saw that the grade was significantly lower than Demyx's, quickly flipping it back to its previous face-down position so that nobody else would see.

* * *

In the closed stall of one of the school's bathrooms, Xigbar woke up to find his face resting on a toilet seat. Apparently, he had passed out drunk again-_-_and in just about the worst place, aside from right in the middle of class of course. He stood up and yawned, rubbing one of his eyes slightly; it was then that he noticed a brown paper bag on the floor next to him and picked it up, immediately finding that it held a rather large bottle of liquor that he had completely emptied.

"Oh yeah," he mumbled, pulling the bottle out of its hiding place. "That'd explain it..."

Shrugging, he tossed both bag and bottle into the nearest trash can as he left the bathroom stall, stopping by one of the sinks on his way out and taking a look into the mirror. His eye widened as he saw something that didn't make one bit of sense-_-_his hair was starting to go gray in wide streaks.

"Wait, _gray hair? _What the hell?"

On closer inspection, this wasn't the only thing wrong. Despite the fact that he was a senior in high school, many parts of his face were marked with rather visible signs of age; he was even beginning to get _wrinkles,_ for crying out loud! He also noticed a large scar on the left side of his face that he could not explain, in addition to the fact that he was wearing an eyepatch. What kind of high school student wears an _eyepatch?_

"Okay... probably just wearin' that while I was drunk to look cool, like I'm a pirate or somethin' dumb like that. Lemme see what's under that little mother-_-_gah!"

He closed his other eye and flinched away from the mirror, putting his eyepatch back on as quickly as possible. He had _not _wanted to see that, though the sight of his obviously non-functional right eye did serve to snap him even further out of his booze-addled state. How the hell could he have gotten so banged-up and not remembered any of it?

Xigbar stared at his image in the mirror for several more seconds, then turned away and headed down the hallway, wondering what the hell was going on. Before he could wander to his next class, the lunch bell rang and immediately a mob of uniformed students cleared out of the nearest classrooms and headed for the double-doors that marked the entrance to the cafeteria.

"Hey," he shouted down the hallway to catch the other students' attention. "Can any of you kids tell me _what the hell is going on here?_"

Most of the group just stopped and stared at him for a few seconds, then hurried into the cafeteria as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened; a few laughed it off as nothing more than Xiggy the class drunk having another one of the booze-fueled outbursts he had become famous for, wondering if his brother Saix, the student council president, would have to go talk to the Principal to get him out of trouble again. Only one of the unusually old-looking elf's fellow students came forward, summoning a heavy-looking book with a flash of dark blue energy as he approached.

"That's exactly what I've been wondering," Zexion said, flipping the lexicon open to a page near the middle which, oddly, seemed to have some things written on it despite the fact that all of the previous pages were completely blank. "Our unexplained powers, the apartments built into the campus, half the teachers in mismatched positions... something is definitely wrong here."

"Yeah, like the fact that I'm frickin' _old,_" Xigbar grumbled. "I'm supposed to be eighteen goddamn years old, finishin' up my last year in this place... and here I am, lookin' like some kinda scarred-up old geezer!"

Zexion paused for a moment. That was something he hadn't noticed before; now that he thought about it, he had seen quite a few students who seemed far too old to still be in high school. Even _he _couldn't have possibly been much younger than twenty or so, just going by his appearance, and yet somehow he was a high school junior. Others, like Marluxia, Axel, and especially Xigbar, appeared to be even older, and as far as he knew nobody was suffering from some sort of rapid-aging disease that might have explained such an inconsistency. The more he looked into his suspicions about the school, the more things just didn't seem to work.

"Xigbar... I'm going to be too busy, so do you think you could do me a favor here?"

The elf scratched one of his ears for a second, then answered.

"Eh... what kinda favor you talkin' about?"

"Nothing much," Zexion said, writing something down in his book and then causing the page to disconnect from the rest of the book and float over to Xigbar. "Just go around during lunch, asking as many of your fellow students as you can about the things I've listed on this page. There's bound to be someone else in this place who's noticed that something strange is going on."

Xigbar snatched the floating page out of midair and quickly looked it over, mumbling a few things to himself as he went. He then looked back to Zexion and nodded, walking past him and heading toward the double-door into the cafeteria after the last few stragglers arriving from classes somewhere on the other side of the school.

"Sure," he said, grinning slightly, "No problem, Captain Scud."

* * *

By the time lunch was over, Xigbar had bounced around to each of the tables, sitting down with each of Thirteenth District High's various subcultures and asking everyone about all sorts of things that Zexion had put down on the sheet of paper, trying to see if anyone had noticed things about the school that just didn't seem right. Unfortunately for him, however, it seemed that most of the school's student body hadn't been paying enough attention to such things to really have much to say; they seemed to want to explain away most of the inconsistencies with some mundane explanation, claiming that the school's teachers seemed mismatched to their subjects because the place must have had to cut some of its faculty due to funding problems, or that older-looking students just matured earlier or had rough childhoods that made them that way. Still others dismissed his words simply because of his reputation as the school drunk, always going around rambling about something random or saying things just to mess with people.

However, his mission was not entirely a failure. When the lunch bell rang and he waited outside in the hallway at the meeting-place he had designated for all those interested in figuring out what was wrong with the school, several of his fellow students did arrive; Roxas was the first to join him, ducking behind the vending machine where Xigbar waited just in time to keep Yoshi from spotting him and tagging along despite the fact that he didn't seem interested in looking into the mysteries of the school.

"So," the boy said, peeking around the side of the machine at the one-eyed elf, "What're we gonna do now?"

"Heh... well, first of all, we're gonna wait and see if anybody else shows up."

As the last of the lunch crowd left the room, Zexion came back from one of the hallways leading to the other side of the school, joining Xigbar and Roxas. Not long afterward, another younger student walked up to Xigbar and stared up at him nervously, apparently finding it difficult to even speak. Roxas immediately recognized her, stepping out from behind the vending machine and addressing her by name.

"Naminé? Are you okay?"

"Yes... I'm fine," she said, sighing slightly and rubbing her forehead with one of her tiny hands as if she was developing a headache. "But... my memories... no, _everyone's _memories..."

"Memories?", Roxas said, pausing a bit. "What do you-_-_"

Xigbar's one good eye widened as he suddenly remembered: Naminé had power over memory, allowing her to look into anyone's memories with just a glance into their eyes.

"She's sayin' that something screwed our memories all to hell," he grumbled, slamming the vending machine beside him with one fist and leaving behind a sizable dent. Seconds later, a can of soda inside came rolling out, apparently dislodged by the force of the blow. "That'd explain why I can only remember bein' around for eighteen damn years even though I _look_... what, forty-somethin'? Maybe fifty?"

"That's right," Naminé said, closing her eyes briefly and seeming to focus on something. She then opened them up once again, shaking her head. "Everyone's memories seem... damaged, unnatural somehow. I can't even look anyone in the eye without getting this horrible feeling that something about them is just... _wrong._"

"Naminé," Zexion said, "Isn't it true that you have the power to alter memories as well?"

She nodded.

"Yes... but that takes time," she said, flinching slightly as her eyes met Zexion's and disjointed fragments of his childhood memories flashed through her mind with pieces obviously missing. "I think I could undo the changes and fix your memories, but... it could take hours, even _days _to reverse all the damage."

"It's really that bad?", Roxas asked. "I mean... I did think it was weird that I remember being here last year, even though I'm a freshman, but..."

The tiny girl turned toward Roxas, glancing into his eyes for a moment and looking through his memories. She was surprised to find that he didn't even seem to have a full two years' worth of memories to begin with; from what she could see, he couldn't remember anything _but _his time in this strange school, but something about his missing childhood memories seemed different from the damage that had been done to everyone else's.

"Roxas... your memory, it's..."

The boy blinked, backing away a bit as Naminé reached one hand out toward his forehead. Zexion stopped him, stepping in behind him and allowing the girl to touch him in hopes that this might aid her reading of his memories in some way.

"There's damage to your recent memories," she said, closing her eyes and focusing on sifting through the connections between events in Roxas' life. "They've all been changed to be related to this school, just like everyone else here. But... this isn't the first time your memory's been altered, Roxas."

Xigbar looked a bit confused by this revelation. Though he admittedly didn't know much about how the girl's powers worked, he had never thought that she would be able to tell just how many times someone's memories had been changed.

"Wait, what's this now?"

"She claims Roxas' memory has been altered more than once," Zexion said matter-of-factly. "Unlike the rest of us, who have apparently only had our memories meddled with this one time."

Xigbar shot a glare at the smaller man.

"Yeah, yeah... I _got _that part, smartass. Still not quite sober here, remember?"

Zexion sighed.

"So what now?", he asked, glancing from Xigbar to the younger two who had joined him. "It's clear that _something _has happened to us, rearranging our memories and planting us here in this bizarre school... but who is the culprit, and why would anyone do such a thing?"

"Yeah... it's strange," Roxas said, staring off down the empty hallway. "Somebody had the power to rewrite our entire lives, and all they did with it was put us in some high school... what kind of freak would go through all this trouble just for _that?_"

"Good question," Xigbar said. "Whoever it is, they've gotta be pretty damn stupid... what kinda moron would try to get _me _to pass for a teenager?"

The bell announcing the next class rang, but none of those who had gathered around the slightly-dented drink machine moved; the mysteries surrounding the school had become far more interesting for them than school itself, and they weren't about to postpone their investigation just to sit in some boring classroom and rot away until the day was over.

"Hmm... this could give us an advantage," Zexion said, putting his hand to his chin. "If my theories are correct, whoever did this to us will be busy watching the drama between students and their daily routines play out, manipulating our lives for some sick form of entertainment..."

He summoned his book once again, writing a few things down and making a small chart displaying the layout of the school, with some vague malevolent figure hovering over it and focusing its attention on the classrooms.

"Which means that if we skip class for the rest of the day and avoid places where students gather... we will essentially be able to slip under their notice and search the entire school for clues as we please."

"Maybe that way I'll have time to fix your memories," Naminé said, glancing at her three companions one by one. "If whoever changed them isn't watching... then it might be safer to try, I think."

Zexion nodded.

"Perhaps," he said. "You might also want to see if your power can affect my lexicon as well. While the information it contains may not technically be _memory _in the strictest sense, it does seem to have been affected as well."

He held up the book and caused dozens of blank pages to flip by, eventually stopping on one page where a short paragraph remained. Further down the page, after another vast blank space, was one lonely sentence that seemed completely out of context; flipping through a few more pages, it seemed clear that whatever had altered Zexion's memory had also wiped the majority of what he had previously written in the book he carried.

"It... it feels the same," Naminé said, staring at the book's pages just as she always stared into the eyes of those whose memories she examined. "Looking at this writing... it seems damaged and unnatural, just like your memories. I'm not sure I'll be able to do anything for it... but I'll try."

"Well, now that _that's_ settled," Xigbar said, leaning against the drink machine and guzzling down the last few drops of the soda he had inadvertently stolen before, "Don't you guys think we oughta get to work on this thing, and not just stand around talkin' in the halls like a buncha gossipy teenagers?"

* * *

"Ah... let's see," Vexen mumbled, half-consciously going over attendance while steadying himself against his desk with one hand to prevent his tired and sleep-deprived body from falling over. "Saix, present... Xigbar, absent... undoubtedly passed out drunk in some far corner of the school again, knowing him."

His eyes almost slipped shut for a moment before he forced them open, pausing to gulp down another full cup of coffee in an attempt to keep himself focused long enough to at least take down his attendance records for the day. He continued down the list where he had left off, starting on the students who (unlike the two elves) actually had last names.

"Zexion Boccaccio... _absent?_", he said, raising an eyebrow as he stared across the classroom. "How strange. That boy's had perfect attendance until today..."

At this point, he nearly collapsed onto his desk, only barely catching himself at the last moment. It was clear that the coffee just wasn't enough; having to teach the school's entire math and science curriculum (and grade every last test) was taking its toll on Vexen, and nothing short of a break from his duties would solve his sleep problems now. He staggered away from the desk, handing the clipboard where the roll sheet was located to a tall, masked student as he passed the front rows.

"Slobodan, if you would," he said, grabbing the doorknob and sleepily attempting to turn it the wrong way several times before finally just yanking the entire thing off its hinges and setting it aside. "Please... take attendance and hand out last week's tests for me. I'm not feeling well..."

He stumbled out of the classroom, supporting himself on the wall as he walked down the hallway toward... nowhere in particular, just as long as it wasn't yet another classroom. He then remembered that the school did indeed have a nurse's office, and staggered his way down the halls in an attempt to find it. He eventually reached his destination, but passed out just feet away from the door, falling with a heavy _thud _on the tile floor at his feet with one hand outstretched in the direction of the door.

When Vexen came to, he was not lying on the floor but in a rather comfortable bed. He stood up where he was lying and found that he was inside the school nurse's office, tucked away into one of the beds in the office's back room which were usually reserved for sick students. He briefly thought that the bed seemed strangely large and comfortable for a school nurse's office, but he had no complaints about that; the bed _was _comfortable, after all, and though he wasn't sure how long he had been there, he seemed to have slept well enough that he no longer felt like falling over out of exhaustion.

"Oh, Mr. Rimewind," an unfamiliar voice said from the main office, coming from a blonde-haired woman sitting in a rolling chair in front of a computer. "Sounds like you're finally up. Feeling any better now?"

"Well... yes, yes I am," he mumbled, pushing aside the covers and getting out of the bed. "But... who, may I ask, are _you?_"

"Oh, I suppose we haven't been introduced just yet," the woman said, finally turning around to face him for a moment before hopping out of her chair and walking toward him. Unlike all of his fellow teachers, the school's principal, and even most of the students, Vexen couldn't remember her at all. "They only hired me this week, after all."

Upon sight of her, Vexen could immediately tell that she was _much_ younger than the rest of the school's faculty and staff; the busty blonde standing in front of him must have just finished college before being picked for this job, as she couldn't have possibly been any older than her mid-twenties. She looked younger than some of his _students, _for crying out loud! He found a grin unconsciously creeping across his face; she seemed to vaguely remind him of someone he had met before long ago, but no matter how hard he tried to think back, no clear memories came to mind.

The nurse took one look at Vexen's face and smirked, reaching up and beginning to unbutton her shirt as she approached him. Immediately, Vexen's eyes widened; at this point, he wondered if this was all just a dream and he was going to suddenly wake up once again and find himself lying on the cold floor outside the office. With his luck, the nurse's office would probably turn out to be closed for the day already, with nobody inside at all.

"You're a dirty old man," she said, continuing to walk toward the back room of the nurse's office in what almost seemed to be slow motion. "Aren't you... Mr. Rimewind?"

Vexen's grin, which had briefly faded from his face at the thought that this might be nothing more than a dream brought on by many days of sleep deprivation, returned wider than ever. For just a second, he had considered pinching himself like some sort of cartoon character to see if he would awaken from the sudden jolt of pain, but he quickly reconsidered; if this _was_ a dream, it appeared that it was going to be one of the best ones he'd had in _quite_ a while.


	30. Back to School II

**CHAPTER 29**  
_~ Back to School II ~_

Xemnas, sitting at the principal's desk of Thirteenth District High, clutched his forehead and groaned slightly, attempting to figure out what was happening to him. His memories seemed jumbled in the strangest way, half of them related to this school (which, according to that half of his memory, he had been the principal of for the past ten years) and the other half to... someplace else. He remembered strange, giggling creatures, with faces that appeared to be made out of text and symbols, but he could not remember what they were or where they came from; he also remembered holding the title of "Superior" in some organization, but could not recall what this organization did or what the impressive-sounding title truly signified. All he knew is that some unconscious part of his mind greatly preferred it to the more ordinary "Principal;" so much so, in fact, that he had nearly blurted it out without thinking when he had been giving the announcements earlier that day.

"What's happened to me?", he said out loud, staring at his hands. In one, he gathered an aura of reddish energy which then extended out into a sword-like blade; the other shimmered with silvery energy for a moment before a rectangular barrier appeared in front of his desk. "I have perfect knowledge of these strange powers, but no recollection at all of how I ever acquired them..."

The silver-haired man summoned a second ethereal blade and then swung both at the barrier out of frustration, cleaving through and shattering it into many small shards of energy which flew through the air for a few moments before dissipating. He then lowered his weapons, letting them buzz slightly in the air before dismissing them as well.

"I remember everything leading up to how I became principal at this school... but those memories all seem _wrong,_somehow. Recalling them feels more like... remembering a work of fiction that I once read, except..."

He paused for a moment, realizing that he had been sitting in his office talking to himself. If one of his students had passed by the door at that moment, they would have probably thought he was insane; he didn't even want to think about what the school's other teachers might think of such a scene. He hurriedly returned his hands to the table in front of him, flipping through some papers in an attempt to make it look like he had been busy with work just in case anyone happened to walk by; fortunately, however, it seemed nobody had been around to see (or hear) his ranting.

Until, that is, a blue-haired young man suddenly appeared in the doorway, holding a large leather-bound book with a strange (but somehow familiar) symbol emblazoned on the front cover.

"Zexion Boccaccio?", Xemnas said, eyes widening slightly with surprise at his sudden appearance. "What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be in class right now?"

"Principal, sir," he said, taking a few steps into the room and sitting down at one of the smaller chairs scattered throughout it. "I've been looking into some strange things about this school, and I couldn't help but overhear what you just said... about your memories."

He paused for a moment, flipping through his book, and then came to a page which he had recently filled up with his notes about what Naminé had told him-_-_about how everyone's memory seemed to be damaged somehow, as if rewritten so that their lives revolved around the strange little school known as Thirteenth District High.

"According to a friend of mine," he said, passing the book across the table to the Principal, "Nearly all of this school's students and teachers have had their memory altered... but you, unlike all the rest I have found, seem to have retained at least some small part of your past memories."

"My past... is that what these strange memories are?", he said, staring at the words scrawled quickly across the page. "These memories of black-cloaked warriors, a hidden base, strange monsters in the shape of little girls... are you saying that these are my true memories?"

* * *

Off on the other side of the school, Naminé and Roxas sat in an empty classroom with the lights off, the girl with her memory-manipulating powers holding one hand to the spiky-haired boy's forehead as she focused on undoing all the damage that had been done. Though every member of the group investigating the school's inconsistencies wanted their memories back, they all had agreed that Roxas should be the one to go through this process first-_-_Zexion had something else to do on his own, and Xigbar was content to just slouch within the classroom's doorway with his arms crossed and scan the halls for any sign of intruders approaching. It just felt _right _to him somehow, being the guy who pulled lookout duty while the others were up to something else; he didn't know for sure, but he wouldn't have been surprised at all if it turned out he had done something along those lines for a living in his real past that, at the moment, he couldn't remember.

Aside from that, Roxas' memories were by far the easiest to restore-_-_owing mostly to the fact that he barely had any to begin with. It was clear that he had once had memories of his childhood and early teenage years, but whatever had happened to those memories, they were beyond Naminé's reach; while it would take days or even _weeks _to fully repair the memory of an ordinary person his age, her corrections to Roxas' memory progressed so quickly that it seemed like she was nearly done already.

"So... how much longer 'til the kid's got his memory back?", Xigbar mumbled, glancing over to Naminé for a moment with his one good eye before returning his gaze to the hallway.

Naminé turned in his direction and blinked.

"It won't be long," she said. "Why?"

The elf continued slouching against the wall, but it was clear from his face that his attention had become much more focused on something out in the hallway. He frowned slightly, then answered.

"My little brother's comin' this way," he said, "Y'know, the Principal's little buddy, student council president and all that? We're in trouble if he catches us skippin' class to hang around in some empty classroom."

Naminé closed her eyes for a moment, focusing intently on her memory-altering powers, then glanced back over to Xigbar.

"I think I'll be done in another five minutes," she said, "Do you think you can hold him off for that long?"

Xigbar frowned for just a moment, then suddenly sprang to attention, jumping forward slightly so that he was no longer slouching against the wall but standing up straight right in the middle of the doorway.

"Well... I'd really rather not pick a fight with my own brother," he mumbled, pausing for a second before stepping out into the hallway and summoning his twin arrowguns with a flash of purplish energy. "But hey, wouldn't be the first time. Not like he's gonna remember this when things go back to normal anyway, right?"

Naminé shook her head slightly-_-_chances were good that he _would_ remember it, actually, but she quietly decided not to mention that possibility to Xigbar. Of course, the thought that Saix would remember their fight after all might not deter him anyway; if anything, it might make him fight even harder, not wanting himself or his brother to remember an embarrassing loss. In the end, that might be even worse than if he just decided not to fight at all-_-_the two brothers were almost evenly matched so long as the moon wasn't out, and she didn't want to be there to find out just how much damage the school could take if they both went all-out.

"Hey," Xigbar said, staggering out into the hallway as if drunk despite the fact that he hadn't had a drop in over an hour. "What're you up to, wanderin' around way out here? Shouldn't you be in class or somethin'?"

Saix scoffed.

"I could say the same to you," he said, shifting his feet slightly in preparation for an attack as he noticed that the older elf had already summoned his weapons. "You're supposed to be in machine shop class with Mr. Harrison right now, if I recall correctly. I'd suggest you start explaining yourself... maybe the Principal will let you get off with just a warning again."

"Nothin' much to explain," Xigbar said, slurring a bit more than he had been previously. "Just decided I wasn't goin' to class today, and there's really nothin' you can do about it... unless you're in the mood for a fight."

The scarred elf raised one of his guns suddenly, instantly dropping the drunk act and letting just one of his weapon's arrowhead-shaped bullets fly in Saix's direction. In a fraction of a second, he raised his hand and summoned his own weapon in a flash of bluish-white light, the massive blade positioned just right to deflect the projectile and send it flying into the ceiling above with a loud _twang._Xigbar grinned and readied both of his guns this time; messed-up memories or not, it had been a while since he had gotten a chance to square off against his little brother, and he wasn't going to let that chance pass him by.

Saix just stood where he had been the entire time, deflecting a dozen bullets in rapid succession before finally making a move. He lunged forward and swung his claymore in Xigbar's direction, just narrowly missing as the quicker of the two brothers hopped back; Xigbar countered with another burst of arrowgun fire, one of the bullets grazing Saix's arm and the other two whizzing past his head on both sides. Saix glanced down at the small tear that now marred his school uniform and growled, slamming his blade into the floor directly in front of Xigbar and kicking up a shockwave of energy that sent the older brother (and quite a few fragments of broken floor tile) flying before he had a chance to dodge.

"Not bad," Xigbar said, catching himself after rolling across the floor a few times. "Not _great,_either... but not bad! Keep it up, kid!"

The blue-haired elf pulled his sword from the small crater it had left in the floor and then charged again, this time raising his weapon high over his head in preparation for an even more powerful strike. Xigbar began to dodge as his brother approached, but then suddenly found that the attack he had been expecting wasn't coming after all-_-_Saix switched moves in mid-swing, instead swooping the weapon around to Xigbar's side and slamming the flat edge of the blade into his ribs.

"Damn it!"

The force of the impact sent Xigbar slamming into the nearest wall, nearly dropping one of his weapons when that second collision came so soon after the first. He groaned for a moment and then glanced back to see what Saix was doing, quickly noticing that he was moving in for another attack. Before he had a chance, a circle of purplish energy formed around the old elf's feet and he suddenly dropped down through the floor, completely disappearing from view. Saix growled in annoyance.

"That old trick," he said, halting his attack in mid-swing as he noticed that Xigbar was no longer in his line of sight. "And now you're going to appear right behind me... _there._"

He swung his weapon in a wide arc as he turned around, spotting Xigbar appearing from a second portal out of the corner of his eye for just a moment before the impact. Except, of course, that the impact never came; a sudden extra weight on his blade informed Saix that his brother had been just a bit too quick for him once again and had jumped up just in time to land on the flat side of the oversized weapon.

"Y'know, this thing'd make a pretty good surfboard if it wasn't for all those nasty spikes," Xigbar said, snickering a bit. "I oughta tell Demyx next time I see 'im... that kid'll be pesterin' ya for _weeks _to let 'im try that out."

Saix snarled and yanked his weapon back, though not quickly enough for it to actually affect Xigbar much-_-_just as he started to pull it out from under the sniper's feet, he kicked off of it and launched himself ten feet backward down the hall, coming to a stop just outside the door to the classroom where their fight had started.

Saix shifted his stance slightly, preparing for another charge, but before he was able to take a single step Xigbar dematerialized one of his weapons and raised one hand in his direction. Grinning slightly, he clenched his hand into a fist, causing a purplish glow to surround it. As Saix began to lunge forward, he suddenly felt his entire body grow heavy; Xigbar had used his powers to strengthen the hallway's gravity. Moments later, the ceiling above them began to creak under the strain of its own increased weight, and Saix didn't have time to move out of the way before he was buried in rubble.

Xigbar paused for a second, then let the purplish glow of his gravity-altering powers fade as he reached up and scratched his head with the free hand.

"Damn... that was embarrassing," he mumbled. He watched the rubble for a few seconds, seeing no movement from within the pile, and then finally continued. "I _really _hope he's not gonna remember any of this crap once it's over..."

Just as he was about to turn and head back into the classroom to check on Roxas and Naminé's progress, a muffled snarl caught his attention; he focused his attention back on the pile of rubble just in time to spot a whitish-blue glow emerging from every crack before exploding outward with enough force to send bits of stone, wood, and plaster shrapnel flying down the hallway at high enough speeds to actually hurt somebody. Fortunately, Xigbar managed to react quickly enough to avoid the brunt of the ceiling-rubble explosion, increasing the gravity once again so that all but a few chunks of building materials fell to the floor long before they reached him.

"Shoulda known that wouldn't hold you off for long," Xigbar said, raising his gun toward Saix and once again letting the gravity around him return to normal. "Guess I'm gonna have to bring down more of the school than _that _to keep you down, huh?"

"I hope you know that the Principal _will_hold you responsible for all damage caused," Saix said, taking a few slow steps toward his older brother and shoving aside the few larger chunks of rubble that remained as he went. This just made him laugh a bit; apparently, the threat of having to pay for repairs to the school didn't scare him much. "Or would you rather I just tell him about your drinking habit and have you expelled?"

Xigbar just shrugged.

"Whole hell of a lot of good _that _would do," he said, spinning his one remaining gun around a bit out of boredom as he waited for Saix to make another move. "'Specially with this school not even bein' the real thing."

Saix suddenly stopped in his tracks, lowering his sword slightly.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Think about it for a second," Xigbar said, pointing to his own gray hair before continuing. "Do I look like a goddamn high school student to you? Hell, forget about me, _you _couldn't even pass for a highschooler!"

Saix thought for a moment. He _had_ noticed a lot of unusually old-looking students hanging around at the school, not the least of which being himself. The fact that he and Xigbar were somehow in the same year of school was even worse-_-_anyone could tell at a glance that they were not even close to being the same age, and yet somehow both of them were seniors at Thirteenth District High. He wasn't sure if he could really believe what his brother was saying, but... at the same time, it was becoming increasingly clear that _something _wasn't right.

"I'm still not convinced," Saix said, lowering his weapon even further before dematerializing it entirely. "But I'll consider what you have to say... if you put away your weapon and tell me everything you know."

* * *

Halfway across the hallway from Xigbar and Saix's brief battle, Vexen was suddenly startled by the sound of something very heavy falling down in the distance. He had no idea what had caused it, but even with his altered memories he knew that sort of sound was _not_ something normal for a high school, regardless of whether or not its students (and faculty) happened to have superhuman strength and a variety of unusual powers. Hurriedly putting his pants back on, he rushed out of the nurse's office and down the hallway toward the source of the sound, leaving his new... _friend_(who had not yet managed to put all of her clothes back on, either) behind.

Before long, he caught up to the source of the sound-_-_Saix and Xigbar, standing a few feet apart, with their weapons summoned. At least, for a second they had their weapons ready; in the time it took him to clear the distance between them, Saix had dematerialized his sword and Xigbar soon followed by putting away the one arrowgun he was still holding at this point. The sound of footsteps soon reached their elven ears, and upon noticing the unusual look on Saix's face, Xigbar turned to find himself staring right at a shirtless Vexen walking rapidly in the direction of the two elves.

"_Whoa_... am I still drunk, or what?"

"No," Saix said, still looking a bit stunned. "Unfortunately... you are seeing things quite clearly at the moment."

Xigbar snickered.

"Either that, or we're _both _drunk."

This, of course, earned him a brief glare from Saix (he never did have much interest in drinking, and even being a high school student wasn't enough to change that), though fortunately he was too distracted by the strange sight coming toward them to have much more of a reaction than that. Vexen finally reached the two and immediately frowned at them, one of his eyes twitching slightly at the sight of two of his students standing in the middle of the wreckage while both of them were supposed to be in class.

"What in the name of..."

"I can explain," Naminé said, walking out of the nearby classroom with Roxas following shortly behind her. "Or at least... I can try. My own memories aren't fully restored yet, and none of us knows _everything _about the situation just yet, but..."

Vexen suddenly lost all interest in the damage Saix and Xigbar's battle had done, instead turning toward the tiny girl.

"What's this about memories?"

"That's what I was about to explain," she said, "Everyone in this school... we've had our memories altered somehow. _Years_of our lives have been rewritten so that everything revolves around this school, but actually... none of it ever happened."

Roxas nodded and continued where she left off.

"All of us were members of a group called Organization XIII," he said, summoning his twin katanas as he spoke. "We all learned how to use these powers so we could fight these monsters called Fangirls... and I'd bet anything that they're somehow responsible for all this."

Vexen paused for a moment, putting one hand on his chin. His eye then twitched again as his gaze turned from Roxas and Naminé to the two elf brothers and the rubble that littered the hallway around them.

"This is all _very_ interesting," he said, "But I don't see how it's any excuse for tearing up this hallway like that. Saix, Xigbar... the two of you are going to be in detention for a _very_ long time, starting _right now!_"

For a few moments, neither of the two moved, just staring blankly at the older man. After a moment of silence, Xigbar finally spoke up.

"Fine, fine... go ahead, lock me up for a week," he muttered, shrugging slightly. "Or whatever. Just lemme know one thing first... why the _hell_are you not wearin' a shirt?"

Vexen paused for a moment, then his eyes went wide; he had actually not realized until this very moment that he was not, in fact, wearing a shirt. He must have forgotten it in his rush to see what had caused the sounds of crashing rubble, focusing on the (much more important) pants instead and allowing the rest of his outerclothes to be left behind. Naminé glanced at Vexen for a moment and then simultaneously blushed and groaned, turning away from the old man and covering her eyes to block out any further scenes from his recent memories that she _really _did not want to see.

"How about this," Saix said, taking a step forward. "If you let us go free, I will... conveniently forget to tell the Principal about what _you _have been up to lately. Do we have a deal?"

"You have _no_ idea what I've been-_-_"

He paused in mid-sentence, remembering that Naminé had the power to look into people's memories with little more than a glance into their eyes. He turned his head in her direction, finding that she was looking away from him and shielding her eyes-_-_a clear sign that she had already seen at least _some _of the very thing he was hoping to keep secret. He clenched his fists for a second, then loosened them up once again and sighed.

"Yes... I suppose we have a deal, then," he said, hanging his head slightly and motioning for Saix and Xigbar to move on. Roxas and Naminé passed by him first, followed shortly afterward by the two elves; as the sound of their footsteps faded off into the distance, Vexen was left alone in the ruined hallway, trying to come up with a way to explain the incident away to Xemnas if the situation ever came up.

* * *

Before long, the two elves, Roxas, and Naminé had crossed the (currently-empty) hallways of Thirteenth District High and reached the door to the school's main office, where Zexion was currently waiting alongside the school's silver-haired, orange-eyed Principal. The two elves slowed their pace a bit at the sight of him, apparently expecting to get in trouble for being seen outside of class, but in an odd reversal of their usual reactions to Xemnas, neither Roxas or Naminé seemed concerned, walking right up to him and greeting Zexion as they approached.

"Ah," Zexion said, glancing in Saix's direction for a second before turning his attention back to the two younger students in front of him. "So I see we've gained another ally. Were you able to restore their memories, Naminé?"

The tiny girl nodded slightly.

"I only had enough time to restore Roxas' memories," she said, "But yes... I was able to return all of his memories about his life here to normal."

"Good. Now... we need to explain the situation to the Principal here. It appears he was somehow able to remember fragments of his real past, but..."

Zexion paused for a moment, as if hearing something in the distance but not being quite sure of what it was. Before he could say another word, the air around him suddenly tore open into four identical green portals; he instinctively flipped open his book and began to draw upon his powers in an attempt to protect himself from whatever was coming, but his attackers were just too fast for him, and four identical feminine legs lashed out from inside the portals and slammed into the blue-haired man's chest and back from four different directions. He gasped for a moment as the air was forced out of his lungs, then slumped to the ground, his book flickering away into blue-black energy after falling to the floor.

The portals vanished as quickly as they came, then suddenly reappeared in the middle of the hallway, this time revealing their occupants. Four tall, thin creatures wearing Japanese school uniforms slowly emerged from the portals, giggling creepily all the way. As the green glow around them faded and their bodies became fully visible, Roxas and Xemnas both immediately recognized them as the same text-symbol-faced monsters from their memories, though only the younger of the two remembered what they were: the dreaded Highschooler Fangirls. Roxas had never seen this particular type up close, but he remembered that Vexen had once explained that they were among the most dangerous class of Fangirls-_-_those with the power to alter reality itself to better fit their twisted fantasies.

"Fangirls," the spiky-haired boy mumbled, readying his twin katanas instantly. He crossed the two blades for just a moment, then swung them downward to his sides and shifted his feet into the combat stance that he now fully remembered. "And not just any Fangirls, either..."

"Highschooler Fangirls," Naminé finished his sentence for him, plucking that detail from Roxas' memory as he glanced back to her for a moment and motioned for her to back away to someplace safer. "That explains the school, but..."

"But what?", Xigbar said, glancing down at her. "We're stuck in some fake high school, and these things do that kind of thing, right? What else is there?"

"Highschooler Fangirls have the power to alter reality," Naminé explained, "But they don't have the ability to rewrite someone's memories... or at least, they aren't supposed to."

Roxas' eyes widened. Immediately, his thoughts turned to the unusual Yaoinator Fangirl that had nearly killed him during his first extermination mission, which had somehow acquired wind-elemental powers in addition to those that were normal to that type of Fangirl. None of the four standing before him seemed any different from the typical Highschooler Fangirl, so there must have been a _fifth _one hiding out somewhere else in the school.

Before he could think about this possibility any further, two of the sailor-suited Fangirls charged forward and attacked with spinning kicks, forcing him to roll between them to avoid the attack. He leaped back to his feet just as the two turned around and swiped at him with their claws, but he took a step back just in time to avoid these attacks as well. Even when the remaining two Fangirls joined in and Roxas was under attack from four different directions at once, he still managed to dodge or deflect every one of their blows. Saix stared for a second, then nodded in approval; he had very few memories of Roxas' combat ability, but from what he did know, this was definitely an improvement.

Once again, the Fangirls attempted the same sudden attack that had knocked Zexion out of the battle, but this time Roxas jumped up to the ceiling the moment they struck, causing each of them to be smacked square in the face by one of their fellow Fangirls' feet. As the creatures staggered back and squealed in annoyance, Roxas lashed out with a powerful spinning slash that sent all four of them tumbling to the floor, sparks of green energy flying from deep gashes across each of their chests. One attempted to push itself off the ground and return to its feet, but wasn't able to summon up enough strength in time; there was a brief flash in Roxas' eyes, and for just an instant his twin swords transformed into the hook-shaped blades that Xion once wielded. He thrust the two weapons into the floor on either side of him, and a split-second later four pillars of pale yellowish-white light erupted from beneath each of the four Fangirls, disintegrating them instantly.

Roxas took a deep breath and removed his swords from the floor, the aura of light around them lingering for several moments afterward as they returned to their usual shape.

"There's still one more left," he said, turning toward the principal's office where the others were still standing. "Maybe more... I'm not sure. But this school's still here, and you guys still have messed-up memories... so those four couldn't be the whole swarm."

At that very moment, the school nurse came walking down the hallway, apparently not bothered in the least by the fact that Roxas was standing there ready for battle and Zexion was lying on the floor unconscious. She walked up to the group as if they were simply a bunch of ordinary high school students hanging out in the hallway, stopping just short of running right into them before speaking.

"Oh, what's going on here?", she asked, looking around with a somewhat puzzled look on her face. "Was there a fight?"

"Yeah... you could say that," Roxas said, dematerializing his weapons and sighing. "Looks like it's over for the moment, though."

He then turned toward Naminé, only to find that she had frozen in place, a stunned expression on her face. She almost appeared to be shaking as she raised one of her hands and pointed at the blonde-haired newcomer, silently mouthing a single word... _"Fangirl."_

Before she could say anything more, the seemingly-normal school nurse revealed her true colors, lunging at her and planting a single fist in her stomach with such force that she was sent flying backward into the principal's office and knocking over several chairs. Saix, Xigbar, and even Xemnas shifted into battle-ready stances, but before any of the three could make a move, Roxas stepped out in front of them and called forth his dual blades once again.

"You guys stay back," he said, glancing back at them over his shoulder. "This time... this time I'll handle this."

_"You mean _we'll_ handle it, right?"_, Xion's voice piped in, though only Roxas heard so much as a word of it. The boy smiled, giving a quick nod in response, before allowing his face to harden into a focused glare directed straight toward the apparent leader of the Highschooler Fangirls.

"I won't hold back," he said, raising one blade in her direction and shifting its shape to that of Xion's swords once again. "So you'd better go ahead and switch to your true form."

The disguised Fangirl burst out laughing. Instead of changing form, she charged again, catching Roxas off guard with her speed and punching him in the face. He stumbled back a few steps, but quickly recovered, swiping at his opponent with his second blade as it shifted to hook-sword form in midair. The Fangirl avoided this attack, then charged at him again, this time moving as if preparing to attack with a kick much like those of the other four Fangirls. Roxas raised his weapons in front of himself to block, but the Fangirl suddenly disappeared just when he expected the blow to connect. Before he was able to react, she reappeared behind him and slammed her knee into his back, sending him flying face-first into the floor.

"Hee hee hee... you _really _want me to show my true form?"

A psychotic grin spread across the once-seemingly-normal school nurse's face as Roxas jumped back to his feet and turned to face her once again.

"Well, you know what they say... be careful what you wish for!"

Roxas readied his weapons once again as an aura of pinkish energy flared up around the Fangirl in human form. Within seconds, this energy had grown so bright that he could no longer see much more than a vague outline of the creature's body; though he could barely see, he did not shield his eyes, continuing to stare into the center of the blaze in preparation for whatever might come next. Just when the pink light began to fade, Roxas made a move, lunging and slashing forward with both of his weapons at once.

"Gotcha," he said, seeing the Fangirl's eyes widen slightly as his two blades were just inches from her chest.

Unfortunately for him, they never connected; a moment before impact, what little pink energy remained solidified into a spherical barrier around the Fangirl and then exploded outward, sending him flying backward and skidding across the floor. The Fangirl, now no longer resembling an ordinary school nurse by any means, burst out laughing once again, this time sounding more like the high-pitched, distorted giggles of other Fangirls more than any normal person's laughter.

"What a moron!", she cackled, seeming barely able to control her laughter. "Heh... didn't you know there's a _reason _nobody ever attacks their enemies in the middle of a transformation?"

Roxas pulled himself back to his feet once again, getting his first clear look at the Fangirl's new form. She somewhat resembled the ordinary Highschooler Fangirls, but she was taller and shaped more like a normal human, much like the Yaoinator variant that her abilities reminded him of.

_"No, this isn't quite the same,"_ Roxas thought, suddenly noticing that her clothing was far more elaborate than a typical Fangirl's and remembering something else. _"This one's more like... those weird Fangirls I saw in the Internet..."_

"That's right!", the Fangirl suddenly yelled, dramatically pointing at Roxas with a single claw-like finger. "And you were asleep the whole time, so you didn't even get to see those guys do any fighting... no wonder you're so confident! You have no idea what you're up against!"

Roxas paused for a moment, but then lunged forward and lashed out with both of his swords at once. Just like every other time, the Fangirl seemed to effortlessly dodge out of the way just in time to avoid the blow, seeming to vanish for a split-second before reappearing behind Roxas. The boy suddenly whipped one of his swords back behind him, but his opponent vanished from his sight once again, returning to her original position in front of him. This time, Roxas didn't hesitate for a moment; before his eyes could even lock on to the Fangirl's speed-blurred form, he dematerialized one of his blades and struck with his bare fist instead, catching the creature off guard and sending her staggering backward.

"Huh... nice trick," Xigbar mumbled to himself. "Guess the kid must've finally figured out how this one works."

Saix turned his head slightly, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"And what do you mean by that?"

"The speed advantage she has over him is so small as to be insignificant," Xemnas answered before Xigbar had a chance to, calmly staring forward at the battle unfolding in front of them. "She only appears to be dodging his attacks so easily... because she is somehow anticipating his moves before he makes them."

Roxas swung and missed once again, though just barely-_-_as the Fangirl sped backward away from the spiky-haired boy, a tattered strip of frilly fabric that fluttered away from her skirt and flopped to the ground made it clear that she was no longer that far ahead of her opponent. Her eyes briefly glowed red as she caught herself and glanced down at her damaged clothing; a moment later, she stared up and glared death toward Roxas, actually growling at him for a moment before appearing to calm down once again.

"How did you _do_ that?", she whined, clenching her clawed hands into fists for a few moments and then taking a step toward the boy. "You... I can read your mind, for crying out loud! I know exactly what you're going to do before you even _move!_There's no way you can react fast enough to keep up with that!"

Roxas paused for a second, but didn't give any response. He only re-summoned his second sword and crossed both of them in front of his chest, beginning to pour his elemental power into the twin blades until they began to visibly glow with a pale yellowish light from within.

"So you can read my mind, huh?", he said, raising the two blades while still keeping them crossed in front of him. "I guess it's a good thing _I_ have no idea what _this_is going to do, then!"

The Fangirl focused her eyes on her opponent's, then flinched away a bit in shock; Roxas wasn't bluffing. Up to this point, she had been able to figure out what the boy was going to do just by skimming over his surface thoughts in the moment before the attack came, but this time there was nothing there to find; Roxas legitimately did not know what this attack was going to do, what form it was going to take, or even if he would actually be able to use it at all. His mind seemed to have drifted away from the battle entirely, focusing on the isolated image of a young black-cloaked girl with piercing blue eyes.

Before the Fangirl could remember exactly where she had seen the oddly familiar girl before, Roxas suddenly unclashed his two blades, rapidly swinging each of them down in an arc to his side. The blades continued until they struck the floor and cut into the tiles, finally coming to a stop several inches behind the boy's feet. The aura of light around the weapons rushed forward in the form of two crisscrossing blades of light, almost certainly too fast for her to dodge. She raised her hands in front of herself, extending her claws to their full length and rapidly charging them with her own energy; when Roxas' attack connected a split-second later, she actually caught the energy-blades in her claws, the yellow flashes of the attack clashing against the swirls of almost electricity-like blue energy that surrounded each of them.

"_Ha! _So much for that plan!", the Fangirl blurted out, glaring at the vague outline of Roxas she could see through the light of the attack that had halted in front of her. "If that's the best attack you can pull off without giving it away ahead of time, you don't have a chance!"

"Actually," an unfamiliar voice suddenly spoke from behind the Fangirl, "That was just a distraction."

She turned her head toward the sound of the voice, seeing that Roxas had somehow gotten behind her. For just a moment, a semi-solid image of a second set of blue eyes (these a bit more girlish-looking in appearance) flashed into existence a few inches in front of the boy's face; they glared at the Fangirl, and then were gone.

"_This,_" Roxas said, speaking in an odd combination of his own voice and Xion's, "Is the attack."

He charged forward once again, but rather than hitting the Fangirl directly, he rushed past her twice, each sword rapidly swishing through the air right past her head but seemingly missing. Just when the Fangirl was about to gloat about his attack's failure, the blades in front of her suddenly shattered into hundreds of polygonal shards of solid light, spiraling around her for several seconds before finally splitting up into even smaller pieces and fading away into the surrounding air. When the light had finally cleared from the room, the Fangirl was barely able to stand; one of her arms was completely severed, and her once-perfect school uniform was shredded to bits. Sparks of green energy erupted from all over her body for a moment as she opened her mouth in an attempt to speak, but before she was able to get a word out, her strength gave out and she collapsed to the ground, shattering on impact into a flash of green light and a flurry of computer code.

Roxas sighed, then returned his weapons to their usual shape before dematerializing them altogether. Wiping a bit of sweat off of his forehead, he walked past the lingering green light of the deceased Fangirl and took a few steps into the school's office.

"Naminé," he called out, glancing around at the overturned chairs and other miscellaneous wreckage for any sign of the girl, "Are you okay?"

"I... I'm fine," she stuttered, struggling to her feet using both hands to steady herself on a table. "I think I might have hurt my leg in the fall, but... it's not too bad..."

She attempted to walk away from the table to join Roxas, but found that she wasn't quite capable of supporting her own weight on it just yet; she nearly lost her balance and fell again, but managed to grab onto the table once again just in time to prevent any further injuries.

"Looks pretty bad to me," Roxas said, walking over to her and supporting her as she slowly hobbled out of the room. "I'll have to take you back to the sickbay as soon as all this high school stuff goes away..."

It was at that very moment that every surface in the entire building suddenly seemed to ripple. With the Fangirls that had created it no longer present, Thirteenth District High could no longer exist; the altered memories that came along with it had already begun to fade away, and each of the Organization members who had not already been returned to normal through Naminé's power were now slowly remembering their entire lives over again while simultaneously forgetting the false ones that had been invented for them. Roxas just blinked a few times and glanced around at the reactions of the other members to this change; Xigbar just leaned against the wall with a dazed look on his face, while Saix twitched slightly as his true memories returned and clashed against his more recent ones of uncomfortable school uniforms and "Larxene's Secret Fun Club." Xemnas, on the other hand, did not seem to react much at all, at least not as far as Roxas could tell. Within a matter of minutes, the high school around them had vanished, replaced first by a strange, dimly-glowing blue void and then, almost immediately afterward, by the Organization's base built into the inside of a mountain. Stone and glass and metal seemed to fill in the emptiness around them bit by bit, the materials used to create the school reverting to their original shape and position and leaving no sign behind that anything was ever any different.

At least, that is, as far as the base itself was concerned. The Organization members, scattered throughout the building and disoriented, still remembered everything that happened during their day at Thirteenth District High; though the false memories planted in their minds by the Fangirls were gone without a trace, everything that had actually occurred was still very much present. This quickly led to a terrible realization on the part of a certain older Organization member, which nearly everyone in the entire base knew about right away.

"Oh, dear _God!_"

Vexen's scream echoed throughout the entire base, causing Xigbar to snicker a bit and Saix to sigh while everyone else just glanced around confused, not having any idea what had gone wrong. All they knew for sure was that, given the fact that Vexen wasn't known for being a religious man in the least, the particular wording he had used in this moment meant that something must have gone _horribly _wrong for the old scientist.

This initial outburst was followed by a stream of more-typical profanity, and before long Vexen-_-_looking a little more unhinged than he usually did-_-_came running around the corner of the hallway, rushing past the few Organization members standing around in the hallway and heading toward the nearest staircase leading down.

"Hey," Roxas asked, yelling down the hallway after him, "What happened?"

Vexen stopped, breathing heavily for a few seconds and then shivering slightly before turning his head to answer. On his face was perhaps the most horrified look anyone had ever seen on Vexen's face. He mumbled something under his breath for a few moments and then answered... sort of.

"I... appear to have made a mistake," he said, seemingly regaining his composure but still twitching and breathing heavily. "Yes... that... that's a good way to put it... a _terrible _mistake."

Roxas just blinked. Naminé, once again, turned and covered her eyes for fear of seeing any more of Vexen's memory than she really wanted to. Xigbar's snickering just intensified, while Saix hung his head in shame over the mere fact that he actually knew what his brother was laughing at. Xemnas, as always, remained calm.

"Now, if you'll excuse me," the old scientist said, suddenly turning and continuing his mad dash down the hallway, "I have to test myself for... several hundred _very_ unpleasant diseases."


	31. The Impaler

**Chapter 30**  
_~ The Impaler ~_

A couple of days had passed since the Organization's base had been abruptly transformed into a high school, and the black-cloaked men and women (and a few children) who lived there seemed to have finally recovered from that unpleasant experience. Vexen was no longer holed up in his lab at all hours of the day testing himself for Fangirl-transmitted diseases; instead, he was in the Fangirl Detection System room, preparing the computer for a full scan of the entire base to root out the Fangirlish elements that he suspected had infiltrated the Organization's ranks. Zexion and Naminé were also present in the room, the blue-haired man with his book at the ready in case he needed to record anything about the scan and the girl sitting in her usual spot, though with her leg in a cast and a pair of crutches propped up against her chair.

"Hmm," Vexen hmmed, "All systems seem to be functioning normally… no major glitches in the last thirty-six hours. It appears we even had a Fangirl alarm immediately before the Highschooler Fangirls attacked, though nobody seems to have heard it."

"Roxas did," Naminé spoke up. "Probably others, too. But that was right before the Fangirls changed our memories… the sound of the Fangirl alarm got turned into an alarm clock ringing."

Vexen glanced at her for a second, then returned to the computer systems, silently adjusting a few things here and there before speaking once again.

"Let's see," he said, "With these settings… the scan should encompass the entire base plus the immediate area, in case our Fangirl spies happen to be outside at the moment."

"Sounds about right," Zexion said, quickly adding a note in his book. "How long will this take?"

Vexen fiddled with some more settings and then finally pushed a button to begin the scan. Immediately, a percentage appeared in the corner of the screen, accompanied by a line of text showing the estimated time remaining.

"As you can see on the screen," he said, pointing out this line, "The full scan of the entire base will take approximately one hour. Normally it would be far quicker, of course… but _normally,_ we do not perform such an in-depth scan on such a large area when a simpler procedure would be more than enough."

Zexion nodded, sitting down in one of the nearby chairs and watching as the data rapidly coming in from the scanning process began to fill several of the Fangirl Detection System's screens.

* * *

Far away from the Fangirl Detection System room, several non-numbered members were doing some research of their own. Estera, Vi, and Banbu were lying on the carpeted floor of one of the base's several recreational rooms, poring over a single sheet of paper as if it contained the ultimate secrets of the universe. Estera's ever-present notebook was open, with various bits and pieces from the page between them written all over it in different combinations. Vi and Banbu had a few scraps of their own paper as well, with similar notes scrawled across them. Sitting in a chair nearby was Slobodan, who seemed to be content with just observing this unusual situation from a distance.

The paper they were looking into so deeply was, at first glance, only a piece of whiny, depressing poetry. It wasn't even especially well-written whiny poetry, instead resembling the sort of thing that a teenager might write after an especially bad day at high school. It appeared to have been written down in a hurry, but after several minutes of close inspection, Vi had pointed out that some of the letters throughout the poem had been re-written at least once after the whole thing was written down the first time. The three on the floor were currently hard at work pinpointing all of these double-written letters and attempting to arrange them into coherent words, though at times just finding which letters _had_ been written over was a challenge.

"This one here," Banbu said, pointing to a loopy Y. "I think… it's kinda hard to tell."

"Yeah," Vi said, taking a good look at the letter he had pointed out and then adding a Y to her list of suspicious letters. "That's one of them."

"Huh," the younger boy said, glancing at his own page of letters. "That _sorta_ spells something, if you put it in with the others from the same line…"

He held up his sheet of paper, pointing out what he had just written down.

"No idea what a 'yuffie' is, though…"

"Yuffie… hmm," Vi said, looking over her own paper and seeing that all the letters from one line did indeed spell "yuffie" when put together. "I'm… not sure what that could be, either."

"Well… the first few lines have a word or two each," Estera said, pointing at the page of her notebook where she had them all written down. "There's 'squall' here, then both 'Leon' and 'hart' on the next line…"

It was at this point that Slobodan finally spoke up, his robotic-sounding voice causing the three younger members to turn in his direction.

"Perhaps it is not three words, but a name," he said. "Squall Leonhart. I do not know of anyone with this name, but it does indeed sound like one."

Estera and Vi both looked over the next few lines, trying to find any sign of another name or name-like combination of letters. They quickly wrote down several words and unusual fragments they found, combining them together into what sounded like at least one more name.

"Aerith Gainsborough," Estera read aloud, "That has to be a name, too…"

"And then there's 'Yuffie,' whatever the heck _that_ is," Banbu said, pushing his hat aside slightly for just a moment so he could scratch his head. "What kind of name is 'Yuffie," anyway?"

Estera adjusted her glasses slightly and pored over the next line for a few moments, then spoke.

"Kisaragi," she said, quickly writing down the doubled letters from the following line. "Yuffie Kisaragi… perhaps it's a Japanese name, though I'll admit that 'Yuffie' would be an unusual spelling for one."

"So… we've got Squall Leonhart, Aerith Gainsborough, and Yuffie Kisaragi," Banbu said, comparing his page to the two girls' to make sure he hadn't missed anything. "Any more on the next few lines?"

"I would not be so concerned with _those_ names."

Estera, Vi, and Banbu all turned, suddenly noticing that Slobodan was now standing behind them and appeared to be looking straight at the page (though the fact that his entire face was covered up by his mask made it hard to tell.) He crouched down and pointed one of his fingers at the page, quickly lowering it toward Kisaki's signature, written in both English and Japanese, below the poem itself.

"Tell me," he said, "What does this say?"

"Umm… it's just her name," Banbu said, looking a bit confused. "First in English, then in Japanese right there under it."

Slobodan shook his head slightly.

"It is not the pronunciation of the words that concerns me," he said, "But their meaning. Banbu, you are fluent in Japanese—what do those kanji actually _mean_?"

The youngest of the Organization paused and then glanced back down at the sheet of paper once again, reading over the short string of Japanese writing below Kisaki's more familiar English signature. For a moment, his eyes remained glued to the paper… and then, he suddenly looked up, a shocked expression forming on his face.

"Wh… what she wrote there… it means 'Fangirl Queen.'"

* * *

Zagan tapped his foot on the white, rubbery floor of the Internet's core. He wouldn't have been surprised if he had been made to wait for a few minutes, but this was more than a few minutes. The Fangirl Queen was _late._

He paced about in the room for a bit, glancing around at his blank white surroundings. It had been a few days since he had last managed to find the time to visit the Fangirl Queen, but this visit was important enough that it couldn't be postponed any longer. Just as he thought of leaving to try again some other time, however, the Fangirl Queen slowly began to materialize in the center of the room.

"Ah," Zagan said, sighing slightly. "Look who _finally_ got here."

Once the many points of energy had joined together and the Fangirl Queen had appeared in all her tentacled glory, he immediately bowed down and addressed her in a more formal manner, as he always had done.

"…My Queen."

"Zagan," she said, her voice echoing throughout the room. "Do you have any news regarding the Fanboys?"

He stood upright once again and nodded in response.

"Yep… I think I've figured it out," he said, holding out one hand and letting a strand of fungus extend almost all the way to the floor. "There's definitely a reason why they're not following orders as consistently or as efficiently as the regular old Fangirls…"

With a swipe of his other hand, he severed the fungus right at the middle, causing half of it to splatter against the floor and rapidly dissolve away into particles of dull yellow-orange energy.

"There might be exceptions here and there," he began to explain, "But for the most part… your boys just aren't connecting to the hivemind like the girls always have. It's no surprise that they're not following your orders so well… most of them can't even hear your voice."

The Fangirl Queen's face twitched slightly, her massive glowing eyes widening a bit. This, it seemed, was more than a little bit unexpected. What had caused the Fanboys to not integrate into the hivemind the way their "sisters" always had done upon transformation? Was it the fact that the transformation was artificial in nature, or had the use of Roxas' unusual half-Fangirl energy accidentally provided them with some sort of partial resistance to Fangirlization, like a watered-down form of the immunity that members of the Organization had?

There was a pause, with only the constant muffled background noise (much like a TV left on without being tuned to any particular channel) reaching Zagan's ears. And then, finally, the Fangirl Queen gave a response.

"You said that _most_ Fanboys were not connected to the hivemind," she said, motioning toward the armored man with a single tentacle. "Were the greatest among them the exceptions?"

Zagan shook his head.

"Unfortunate as it may be," he said, "It's been only ordinary Fanboys who haven't been affected. I don't believe either of the two special cases retained any real connection to you after their first days of Fanboy existence."

He paced a bit, then continued.

"Of course, that doesn't necessarily mean this was all a waste of time. I think the final experiment might still be good for something," he said, "But the prototype we sent in to infiltrate the Organization… he's probably not going to be useful to us anymore without a way to hear your commands."

The Fangirl Queen nodded, her tentacle-like hair wavering in the air around her as she began to disappear from the room pixel-by-pixel.

"In that case," she said, her voice distorting more and more with each word, "_Kisaki_ will eliminate the prototype."

* * *

At that very moment, Kisaki was lying on a couch in one of the Organization's recreational rooms. If anyone else had been around, it would be clear that she was not simply taking a nap, however—a television in front of her displayed the blinking "Game Over" screen of some old video game, and the system's controller was lying awkwardly in the floor in front of her, as if it had slipped out of her hands and bounced across the floor. Kisaki herself was flopped limply over the nearest arm of the couch with about the same amount of care, one of her own arms dangling over the side and the other barely hanging off of one of her legs; if not for the arm preventing it, she would have probably fallen off the edge of her seat. She was completely unconscious, without even so much as a twitch of movement.

Until, that is, her eyes suddenly popped open and began to glow red.

Kisaki stood up jerkily, as if being yanked off of the couch by strings at first, before slowly adjusting back to more natural movements as she walked further away from it. One of her boot-clad feet stomped on the video game controller and cracked it apart in several places, but she didn't seem to notice. She looked around the room almost robotically, as if scanning her surroundings for something; for a brief moment, she seemed to pick up on something in the distance, and then she went rushing for the nearest exit at full speed, leaving the forgotten video game and its shattered control behind her.

* * *

Vexen's eyes widened as the Fangirl Detection System computer suddenly started picking up a completely unfamiliar reading. Within a split-second, a Fangirl alarm was blaring throughout the Organization's base—and nobody had manually activated the alarm this time. This could only mean one thing: a Fangirlism level high enough to be a threat had been detected somewhere within the base, setting off the emergency alarm that had been reserved for the worst-case scenario of an all-out Fangirl invasion.

"What the hell!?", Zexion blurted out, his usual calmness failing for just a moment. "The alarm… but I didn't..."

"No… none of us did," Vexen said, staring up at the screens as more and more of them began to display information about the unusual reading that the system had suddenly picked up on. "The emergency alarm… the only way it would ever be triggered is if a Fangirl ranked level 40 or above has just appeared _inside_ our headquarters without anyone noticing…"

"Level _40?_", Naminé asked, turning toward the two men, "But that's…"

"Within the range of the one that nearly killed Roxas," Zexion said, "So it would be a serious threat to almost everyone here. Which is why—"

"Yes, yes, we can inform Naminé of the reasoning behind the emergency Fangirl alarm later!", Vexen said, rapidly tapping away at the nearest keyboard. "We have more important things to attend to at the moment. Cancel the full scan of the base immediately and focus a new scan on that reading instead—it appears our Fangirlish infiltrator has revealed itself!"

Naminé typed away rapidly for a few moments, and most of the screens went dark for a split-second before starting up again. One monitor did not change—the one displaying the current location of the suspicious Fangirl energy reading, which was now moving quite rapidly down one of the base's hallways, only stopping occasionally at doorways or corners almost as if trying to track something by scent. Zexion watched this movement for a few seconds and raised an eyebrow.

"What is it doing?"

"Good question," Vexen said. The pink dot that represented the mystery Fangirl made a brief pause at an intersection and then abruptly turned and continued barreling down the hallway at full speed. "It almost seems to be searching for something… obviously not something nearby, either, based on the speed of its travel. But _what _is it after…?"

* * *

Kisaki turned and charged down another hallway, coming closer and closer to her target. Several non-numbered members staggered backward, almost bowled over just as they had left the room they had been hanging around in before; they recognized her as a member of the Organization by her uniform, but couldn't get a clear enough look to identify her as she passed them by.

A few more turns and a trip up a flight of stairs later, she suddenly stopped in the middle of a hallway and began looking around wildly. After a few seconds of this, she focused in on a single room and slowed her pace, steadily walking in the direction of the nearest doorway. Stopping in front of the closed door, she stared intently for a moment and then took a step back, holding one hand out to her side. Instantly, a strange electrical buzzing sound emanated from her position and the feeling of the air changed, as if everything suddenly became heavier and more unstable—so much so that everyone within a couple hundred feet in all directions noticed. Behind the closed doors of the room that Kisaki had stopped in front of, Yoshi suddenly froze in the middle of bringing a potato chip to his mouth, losing his grip on the snack so that it tumbled to the floor. For a few moments, the buzzing and the distortion in the air continued to intensify; Kisaki's spear slowly appeared from the shape of the swirling green energy around its wielder, seeming almost as if it were struggling against the process of its own summoning. Eventually, the weapon solidified and the raging energies around it dispersed, leaving only a faint lingering buzz in the air as they went.

From the other end of the hall, Estera brushed some stray hairs out of her face, adjusted her glasses slightly, and raised a hand in Kisaki's direction.

"Over there," she said, pointing the black-cloaked girl out to the others following her down the hallway. "That burst of power I just sensed… it was definitely her."

"Wait a second," Banbu said, "Isn't that Kisaki?"

"Looks like her from here," Vi answered, nodding slightly. "And that spear is definitely hers…"

"It's Kisaki," Estera confirmed, "That strange aura I just felt was exactly like the first time she summoned her weapon…"

As they continued to run down the hallway, Kisaki (apparently unaware of their approach, or at least not concerned with it at the moment) raised her spear and thrust it through the door, not even bothering to open it the usual way. Green energy swirled around the weapon's shaft for a moment and then flooded into the door, spreading out across the entire thing before suddenly fading away… and causing the door to first transform into a gigantic chocolate bar and then rapidly melt away.

"No… not exactly the same," Estera said, shivering slightly. "It's… it might be _worse_ this time."

"I am detecting distortions of all types in the air around her," Slobodan said, fiddling with a switch of some sort on the side of his mask for a moment as he spoke. "Abnormal radio waves, electromagnetic interference, and background radiation… it seems her very presence is altering her surroundings."

Moments later, Kisaki entered the room, stepping over the pools of door-turned-chocolate which were now rapidly drying and crumbling away. Yoshi saw her, but couldn't bring himself to make any sort of move toward fighting back or escaping; he only timidly backed away, shivering in fear just from her presence and the sight of her glowing red eyes. She raised her spear and pointed it toward Yoshi, then spoke for the first time since her awakening.

"First of the Fanboys," she said, her voice unusually distorted, "And second among your kind. You… are no longer of any use to us."

Just as she was about to thrust her spear down and end the young Organization member's life with a single blow, there was a swishing sound, and an arrow tipped with what appeared to be a massive rhinoceros beetle flew into her back, briefly knocking her off balance. Before she was able to react to this unexpected attack, a second arrow flew past her—this one tipped with what appeared to be a stag beetle—and clasped its jaw-like horns around Yoshi's midsection before turning around in mid-flight and winging the boy safely out of the room.

"Kisaki!", Banbu yelled, summoning his yo-yo and taking a step past Slobodan toward the open doorway, "What the heck are you doing!?"

She turned around, staring directly at the boy. He couldn't help but flinch at the sight of her eyes; though they were always a bit unusual-looking due to their silvery color, the glowing red pupilless voids staring back at him now were far worse. They reminded him more of the eyes of some powerful Fangirl than those of Kisaki herself; he couldn't stop himself from thinking back to the battle that nearly claimed Roxas' life, where the Fangirl's red eyes had become visible through the smoke long before the rest of its body could be seen at all.

"Careful," Vi said, bracing herself and readying her paintbrush. "I'm not sure if that's… the Kisaki we know…"

Slobodan readied another arrow, this one tipped with a simple point rather than any kind of oversized insect. Estera shifted into a battle stance and held her staff out in front of her, the orb at its tip hovering back and forth slightly as if awaiting her mental commands. Yoshi, pinned to the wall by the bug-arrow that had saved him, did nothing but watch as the assortment of non-numbered members got ready for what was likely to be the fight of their lives…

…until it ended, unexpectedly, with Kisaki's red eyes fading back to normal and her weapon vanishing. She blinked a few times, staring nervously at her surroundings and raising up her hands in surrender as she backed away from the group of black-cloaked fighters who were now blocking her only escape route. Slobodan lowered his bow and dematerialized the arrow he had readied, but not soon enough; as Kisaki continued to back away, she stumbled over a chair that she had apparently not noticed and went toppling backward onto the floor.

"Oww!"

Estera sighed and unsummoned her staff, wiping a bit of nervous sweat away from her forehead; it appeared that there would be no battle that day after all. The other members standing around her soon followed suit, and before long Slobodan was the only one among them who still held onto his.

"Okay," Vi said, "_That_ might be the Kisaki we know…"

* * *

"So, Kisaki," Vexen said, staring directly at the girl as she sat in the small wooden chair in one of the Organization's rarely-used prison cells. "What do you remember of today's events?"

She shrugged.

"Not much," she said, shaking her head slightly. "I guess I kind of blacked out for a while… one minute I was playing some video games, then the next thing I know I'm standing in another room with everybody pointing weapons at me!"

The old scientist raised an eyebrow.

"And _you_ did _not_ have your weapon summoned?"

"No way!", she said, struggling slightly against the pair of handcuffs that held her to the chair. "I told you, I don't know how I _got_ there, but I was just standing there… and they were all aiming at me like I was about to attack _them!_"

"According to everyone else involved," Zexion said, looking over a page or two of notes in his book, "That's exactly what happened. You were found in that room with your weapon summoned, about to attack Yoshi. You only dematerialized it _after_ they had removed the boy from the room and readied their own weapons."

Kisaki sighed and hung her head.

"But… I don't remember _any_ of that stuff!"

"Perhaps not," Lexaeus said from his position in front of the only way out of the cell. "But Banbu, Vi, Estera, Slobodan, and Yoshi do, and I see no reason to doubt the five of them."

"Don't worry," Zexion said, dematerializing his book and taking a step closer to his trainee. "We don't yet know enough to say what, exactly, happened here. You yourself said that you don't remember doing anything out of the ordinary, despite five claims to the contrary… so for the moment, your imprisonment in this cell is for your own protection, just in case it happens again."

He patted her shoulder reassuringly, then turned and walked out of the cell. Lexaeus stepped aside to give him room to exit, then returned to his previous position.

"Yes… what Zexion says is true," Vexen added. "Mind you, we _do_ have the beginnings of several theories as to what caused your outburst… but I doubt there would be much use in explaining them to you in your current state. Just behave for the next few days and we'll fill you in with anything we uncover by then."

Lexaeus simply nodded, then moved to allow Vexen to leave the room as well. He paused for just a moment, then took a few steps toward Kisaki and removed her handcuffs before leaving the cell and locking it behind him. An electrical hum filled the room for a moment as the cell's many security measures re-activated themselves, and as soon as the giant of a man's footsteps faded off into the distance, those faint hums were the only sound Kisaki could hear.


	32. The Old Gang

**Chapter 31**  
_~ The Old Gang ~_

In an ordinary-looking apartment, a man with long brownish hair was standing in front of a mirror and getting dressed. At first, his clothing seemed fairly normal—a pair of black pants, some boots, a white T-shirt, an old silver necklace. And then, he opened one of his dresser drawers and pulled out something a bit more unusual: a bulletproof vest, and not a cheap one either. This was the sort of thing that police or military personnel would probably wear; it would be good for more than just taking a low-caliber shell or two before busting. Over that, he put on a black leather jacket, finishing it up by removing a massive revolver from the dresser and slipping it into the holster that dangled off to the side of his belt.

He walked over toward the nearest window, one which was connected to the building's fire escape. After opening the window, he paused for just a moment and glanced over at a photograph stuck to the apartment's old refrigerator, one of a young woman standing in front of a group of others (of which the long-haired man was a member) and striking a goofy pose.

"Only a year," he said, sighing. "And look at what kind of shape we're already in without you… I don't know how much longer we can keep this up."

After a brief pause, he turned away from the picture and shook his head. Now wasn't the time to be thinking of the days before she had disappeared; there were still Fangirls out there to fight, after all, whether the one among them who did that best was still around to help do the job or not.

* * *

The Dimensional Hippievan rolled to a stop just in time to avoid colliding with another vehicle parked in front of an ordinary-looking suburban house. Luckily for the Organization, their destination was in a neighborhood that wasn't too busy at this hour; nobody was around to see a dark blue Volkswagen van full of black-cloaked strangers suddenly appear out of thin air, and if anyone had they would probably assume it was just a trick of their half-asleep eyes. It was still pretty early in the morning, after all.

"So this is the place, then," Zexion said, glancing over at the house through the van's window and summoning his book to check to see if its number matched the address in his records. "It's so… normal."

"It seems that way," Estera said, almost immediately pulling out her notebook as she left the van. "I was expecting someplace with a public Internet access point myself… not somebody's house."

"Yes… it seems that whoever put that damaged shirt up for sale wasn't thinking of concealing their identity," Vexen added. "If my suspicions are correct, however… this may be because they were not intending to stay here for long afterward."

Zexion nodded, sighing slightly. He already knew what Vexen was implying by this—that the mysterious individual who was selling the damaged T-shirt of a Fangirl attack survivor over the Internet was none other than Kisaki. What information they had so far seemed to match up. The extra damage to the shirt made it look as if it had been impaled (along with its wearer) by a very large weapon, such as Kisaki's spear. They had first encountered her only a couple miles away from the neighborhood they were currently standing in, and she had mentioned that she knew about Organization XIII because a friend had seen them when a swarm attacked a convention he had been attending. With her recent behavior, most notably the fact that she had attempted to attack a fellow Organization member for no apparent reason, everything seemed to be coming together to point in her direction.

"Well… there's two cars parked here," Zexion said, glancing over to the driveway and garage for a moment before returning his attention to the front door of the house. "So someone's bound to be home."

Vexen nodded, and Estera momentarily put her notebook back into one of her cloak's pockets and took the lead in heading toward the door. As she was by far the most normal-looking of the black-cloaked trio, this was probably for the best; Vexen's height and Zexion's hair color might have come as a bit of a shock to whoever might be living there. The two of them stood back a few feet while Estera stepped right up to the front door and rang the doorbell, waiting for just a few seconds before someone came out to answer the door.

"Eh? Who're you?"

It was a balding middle-aged man of Asian descent, peering at Estera through a pair of thick glasses. Sitting at a table at the end of the hallway behind him was a woman of similar age, her reddish-brown hair tied up in a bun.

"Sorry for the interruption," she said, adjusting her glasses slightly and suppressing her power so as to seem as non-threatening as possible. "My name is Estera Pasternack. I'm from a group called Organization XIII… we're here about Kisaki."

The man in the doorway gave her an odd look.

"Kisaki?", he said, staring at her and raising an eyebrow. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Kisaki Kyoshajo," Estera said, holding up a piece of paper with Kisaki's regular signature in both English and Japanese. "Does a person by that name live here?"

"I told you before… I don't know of any Kisaki."

Estera paused and sighed.

"Then… let's see if I can put it another way," she continued, "When was the last time your daughter was home, sir?"

The man in the doorway paused. Though he was trying as hard as he could to conceal it, his reaction to that statement was obvious to Estera; even without her powers, which let her pick up on the fear and nervousness of others around here, she could see his eyes widen and his mouth twitch for just a moment before he forced them back into their usual calm positions.

"You… must be mistaken," he said after another pause. "We have no daughter."

Before she could say so much as a word in response, he slammed the door. His wife, still sitting in the next room, sat her bowl down and turned in his direction as he walked back toward the table.

"Who was that?"

"No one we know," he answered, sitting down and sighing. "It's strange, though. They didn't know her name, but… they came looking for _her._"

* * *

The man in the black leather jacket leaped through the air and slammed an unsuspecting Glomper Fangirl in the side of the head with a powerful kick, sending it staggering backward. Before it had a chance to recover, he drew his revolver and fired off two shots into its face at point-blank range; it shrieked and tumbled to the ground, and seconds later it glowed green and shattered away into nothing.

"Two shots," he muttered to himself, holstering the weapon once again. "It took two shots dead-on from that range, and even that didn't destroy it right away… they've gotten stronger."

"But not quite strong enough," a tiny girl wearing a headband said, flinging several shuriken at a Fangirl of her own and causing it to fall over backward with the metal stars embedded in its chest. She jumped onto it and slammed down with both feet, shattering the already-wounded Glomper instantly.

She recovered her weapons from the ground, slipping them back into the pouch on her belt where they were stashed away, and then patted the gunslinger on the shoulder.

"C'mon, Squall," she said, "They haven't changed _that_ much. You're just annoyed that you're blowing so much money on ammo these days."

"I don't blame 'im," an older man wearing a pair of goggles on his head said, pulling out a cigarette and lighting it. "That's expensive shit he's wasting on these things."

"He's right, though," another girl said, walking away from where the older man was standing to join the others. "I can sense it… something really has changed about them, just in the last few months."

Squall nodded and walked over to her, joining the rest of the group now that the handful of Fangirls had been destroyed. He glanced around for a few seconds before turning his head back toward her.

"Aerith," he said, "Can you sense any more of them in the area?"

She closed her eyes and concentrated, focusing on the energy signatures of every living being around them. First she could only sense her friends immediately around her, then her awareness expanded to cover an area several blocks across; within a few minutes, her mysterious sixth sense could pick up on the energy signatures of everyone in the entire neighborhood, though she was nearing the limit of her ability to expand it so far. At first she only picked up on ordinary humans, near-powerless specks of energy barely distinguishable from background noise; then, suddenly, she stumbled across something that made her gasp and open her eyes, breaking her concentration instantly.

"What was that?", the smaller girl said, leaning over in front of Aerith and waving one hand in front of her face in an attempt to dispel the shocked look that had come over it. "Is it a really strong one this time?"

"Don't be so obnoxious," Squall said, yanking her away from Aerith. "But yeah… what _did_ you just sense out there?"

"I'm… not sure," she said, trembling slightly. "There were three of them... two of which were far more powerful than any Fangirl we've ever encountered…"

"So what the hell were they? Fangirls, or what?"

"No," she answered, "They weren't Fangirls. Their power was something completely unlike theirs… It almost seemed familiar, but… that can't be possible."

"Familiar?", Squall asked. For a moment, his eyes widened slightly. There was only one person any of them had ever known with powers opposed to those of the Fangirls, powers greater than what any of them could ever hope to match no matter what sort of weapons they used or training they underwent. "Where are they? Can you lead us in their direction?"

Aerith nodded and led the way, no longer shaking from her initial reaction to the three unusual powers she had sensed. Moments later, the rest of the group began to walk after her down the sidewalk, with only the older man staying behind.

"Hey, Cid, aren't you coming?", the smaller of the two girls said, turning to look back at him when she noticed that there were no footsteps following behind her. "I thought you'd wanna see this."

He shook his head and took another puff from his cigarette.

"Nah," he said, turning back toward the door of the house whose porch he was standing on. "I'll leave this stuff up to you kids this time. Don't wanna have to deal with all the paperwork if I break my hip or some shit, runnin' off down the street like that."

She rolled her eyes slightly at his "old man" act, then shrugged and took off running down the sidewalk.

* * *

Halfway down the block from the house that the black-cloaked group had been abruptly shut out of before, Zexion suddenly stopped in mid-step and sniffed at the air. Vexen and Estera paused upon noticing that their companion had stopped and turned to look back at him, wondering what was going on.

"Fangirls," the blue-haired man said, sniffing slightly for a moment before continuing. "I just picked up on the scent of Fangirls somewhere nearby… but just now, the scent started to fade away."

"Hmm," Vexen responded. "Do you suppose they left, or that one of the locals managed to destroy them?"

"It's hard to say… I haven't picked up on any other powers in the area, though, so if they _were_ destroyed they must not have been much of a threat to begin with."

"Hmph… knowing Fangirls, they probably just forgot to look both ways before they wandered out into the street," Vexen scoffed, turning and heading back toward the spot where the Dimensional Hippievan was parked.

Just as he was about to reach for the driver's-side door of the van, the sound of footsteps on the roof of a nearby house put him on high alert. He whipped around and summoned his shield just in time to deflect a flying kick from an unfamiliar girl, who propelled herself off of the weapon's surface and backflipped to safety several feet away in some unsuspecting citizen's front yard before the old man could retaliate.

"Well, that was unexpected," he muttered, lowering his shield slightly so he could take a look at his attacker. "And who might you be?"

"I'm the great ninja Yuffie!", she announced, striking a pose. "And the real question is… who the heck are _you,_ and what're you doing creeping around people's houses like that?"

"Creeping?", Vexen said, staring at her and frowning. "Perhaps so… but at least I haven't leapt off of a roof and assaulted anyone. Anyway… I am Vexen, Number Four of Organization XIII."

Yuffie cocked her head to one side and made an odd face.

"Uh… did you seriously just say 'Organization XIII?' C'mon, we all know that's just some video game! Tell me who you _really_ are!"

"And more importantly," an unfamiliar man's voice added in, "That shield… you just created it out of thin air, didn't you? Tell us how you managed to get powers like that."

Vexen rolled his eyes slightly.

"And what, exactly, do you think would ever motivate me to go spilling all of Organization XIII's secrets to a band of strangers in some Nevada suburb?"

There was an audible _click_ of a revolver cocking.

"Well… for one thing," the new voice said, "I'm the one with the gun."

For the first time, Vexen turned to see what was happening on the sidewalk a few yards away from him, taking his attention off of the young ninja who had come flying off of the roof before. A man in a leather jacket with shaggy dark-brown hair was standing behind Estera, holding a massive gun to her head. Zexion was standing a few feet away, focusing his attention on the man with the gun but so far not having made a move. Vexen glanced back to Yuffie for a moment, then to the newcomer, before noticing that a third stranger—this one a brown-haired woman in pink, a long braid of combined hair and ribbons trailing behind her as she walked—was heading toward them as well.

"Squall," she said after catching up to him, "Put it away."

He paused for a moment, groaned, and then finally decocked the weapon and slipped it back into the holster on his belt. The brown-haired woman sighed slightly, then stepped up to Zexion and Estera and introduced herself.

"I am Aerith Gainsborough," she said, "And my… slightly-less-rational-than-normal friend here is Squall Leonhart."

Estera blinked. Those names sounded awfully familiar.

"Be glad your friend defused the situation when she did," Zexion said, brushing a stray hair out of his face and shooting a glare at Squall. "The last time some thug off the street was foolish enough to think a gun gave them a chance against members of our Organization… well, let's just say it wasn't pretty."

"It wasn't even loaded," he admitted. "Not really the hostage-taking type, anyway."

Yuffie bounced over to reunite with her two friends, popping up behind Squall and slapping him on the back lightly before chipping in.

"Yeah," she added, "And plus, there's no way he'd waste his super-pricey custom Fangirl-slayer ammo like that!"

At this statement, Vexen suddenly started paying much closer attention, dematerializing his shield and heading over toward Zexion's location to join the rapidly-growing group that was standing on the sidewalk.

"So the three of you know about Fangirls, then? Interesting," he said, glancing over the three in sequence and taking in every bit of information he could decipher about them. He found it odd that only Aerith, the most non-combative of the trio, seemed to possess even the tiniest spark of unusual power, but chose not to mention this observation. "Zexion mentioned sensing a Fangirl presence fading away earlier, as if someone managed to destroy them. I suppose that was your doing, then?"

Yuffie nodded enthusiastically, suddenly whipping out half a dozen shuriken seemingly from out of nowhere and grinning. Squall slapped his forehead and motioned for her to put them away, then nodded as well.

"That's right," the apparent leader of the group finally said once his younger friend had put the pointy implements safely back into her pockets once again. "We found out about those things a few years ago, and we've been tracking them down and dealing with them ever since."

"Things used to be a little easier," Aerith said, fiddling with a ribbon in her hair that had come slightly loose. "The Fangirls weren't as strong when we first started fighting them as they are now…"

"Yeah, and we used to have some extra help," Yuffie added in. "I mean, me and Squall can still handle a couple of 'em without too much trouble, but I dunno what we're gonna do the next time a swarm shows up…"

"Extra help?", Estera asked. "So you've had allies who've died fighting the Fangirls?"

"Yes and no," Squall said. He sighed, glancing for just a second at the very same house that the Organization had just stopped by. "I mean… it's a long story. You don't need to know more than that."

Zexion glanced at the house as well, noticing that Squall had looked in its direction. The previously-unknown Fangirl fighters of Nevada, the missing ally who was (and yet, at the same time, was not) a casualty of the never-ending battle, and that house… the pieces were beginning to come together.

"Perhaps," he said, summoning his book and flipping through it. "I suppose there's no need for us to know the full story right away. But how about answering just one question?"

Squall shrugged.

"Go ahead."

"The ally you lost in the battle against the Fangirls," he said, turning slowly and obviously in the direction of the house so that Squall followed his gaze. "Am I correct in assuming that she used to live in that house… right over there?"

Squall froze. Aerith's eyes widened and she gasped slightly. Yuffie's jaw dropped. How could these three strangers, who had come from who-knows-where and didn't even know anyone in this town's names, know about something like that? How could they have ever guessed such a thing?

"Th… that's right."

Squall stared blankly at the house, his eyes drawn to a certain room on the second floor. It was a dark room, where a thick film of dust had developed over the glass windowpane in the absence of its former inhabitant.

"She used to live there... before the day she disappeared."

He sighed and forced his gaze away from the house and the memories that came along with it.

"No, not disappeared… before the day she was taken away."


	33. The Impaler II

**Chapter 32**  
_~ The Impaler II ~_

In the Organization's base, Kisaki sat alone in the corner of the containment cell where she had been placed after her attempted attack on Yoshi. Her eyes may have been open, but if anyone had been watching at this moment, it was clear that she was not conscious or aware of her surroundings in any way. Until, that is, one of her hands twitched.

For a moment, her strange silvery eyes flickered—not to the glowing red that shone through them during her previous rampage, but to a much more natural dark brownish tone with maybe a hint of green. She slowly turned her head and took in her surroundings, seeming to be in a daze as if she had just awakened and was not yet fully shaken out of her sleep. There were blank stone walls all around her, the hum of the electrified bars, the near-silent whirring of tiny mechanical parts in the security camera hidden away in the opposite corner of the room as it followed her every movement.

Before this awakening brown-eyed Kisaki could do so much as stand, her silver eyes returned, quickly shifting once again to the menacing red ones as her head turned so that her gaze was focused directly on the security camera. She raised one hand in its direction, and for a brief moment the air was filled with a buzzing sound as her neon-green energy flared up around her, bursting forth in the form of a beam and reducing that entire corner of the room to a small crater filled with miscellaneous debris.

As the sound of the emergency Fangirl alarm began to blare throughout the entire base, Kisaki summoned her spear with a roar of distorted static and plunged it into the floor, whirling around in a tornado of green energy until the stone below her was torn to shreds and sent flying off in all directions.

Kisaki was a prisoner no longer.

* * *

"Her name was Chinatsu Arakaki," Squall said, leaning against a nearby fence. "_'A thousand summers in the shrine enclosure.'_ That's what she said it meant. Kind of a weird name when you think about it… I guess it was supposed to sound poetic."

"Where'd you guys get 'Kisaki' from anyway?", Yuffie piped in. "I don't remember her ever going by that one. No wonder her parents didn't know who you were talking about…"

Zexion flipped through his book for a few moments, refreshing his memories of the Organization's first encounter with the strange girl they knew as Kisaki. After a few moments, he looked back up toward Squall's group and spoke.

"We first met her not far from here, about two months ago. She insisted that we allow her to become a member of our Organization, and introduced herself as 'Kisaki Kyôshajo,'" he said, waving his hand once and causing an illusionary image of Kisaki as she appeared on that day to hover over the book's pages. "We later learned, thanks to a coded message written by Kisaki herself while she was suffering from a series of mysterious blackouts, that when written in Japanese this name can translate to 'Fangirl Queen.'"

Squall's eyes widened.

"The Fangirl Queen," he muttered. He briefly clenched his fists. "That's how we lost her in the first place…"

He slumped against the iron fence behind where he was standing, closing his eyes for a moment and sighing.

"I don't know how she did it," he said, "Maybe someone else told her, or maybe she managed to figure it out on her own. But somehow, she found out that the source of the Fangirls was some sort of 'Queen' in the center of the Internet…"

"It sounded crazy," Yuffie said, "I mean, those things seemed like a buncha mindless bugs a year ago, right? And how's somebody gonna get inside the Internet anyway? But she seemed pretty sure of it."

"We didn't doubt her," Aerith added in, "I guess… with the powers she had, we all kind of thought of her as some sort of 'chosen one,' someone who'd always manage to pull things off no matter how impossible they seemed."

"She went inside the Internet," Squall continued. "I don't know how she did it. She never explained it to any of us before she went…"

He sighed again and rubbed his forehead as if trying to soothe a headache—or perhaps, to push away the old memories that had been forcibly brought back to the surface by the day's events.

"And after she went in… she never came back."

* * *

"Whoa!", Banbu shouted, nearly jumping out of his shoes as the Fangirl alarm suddenly began to ring and the air all around him was permeated with a strange, but familiar, static buzz. "What's going on!?"

"No idea," Vi said, glancing over at the younger boy for a moment before summoning her paintbrush in a swirl of shadows. "That's definitely a Fangirl alarm, but… I get the feeling that this isn't just an ordinary swarm alert…"

Standing at the corner of the next hallway over, a tall and somewhat muscular young man with spiky blonde hair held out one hand, clenching it into a fist and flexing as his spiked knuckle weapons flashed into solid form. He reached up with both hands behind his head and tightened the reddish headband he was wearing, then glanced over his shoulder to the other two non-numbered members standing nearby.

"I dunno about you guys," he said, "But I'm picking up on a crazy Fangirl energy source up above. You mind getting some numbered members in case I need backup?"

"You can't be serious, Reid," Vi said. "You're going running off to fight this thing yourself?"

He smirked and nodded.

"Xaldin didn't train me for all those months for me to just sit here and worry," he said, clashing the spikes of his two sets of knuckles together. "Right? You guys can stay out of it if you want, but I'm going whether you guys like it or not."

"Be careful up there, man," Banbu said, summoning his own weapon just in case and giving the older member a nod. "This weird feeling in the air, and that buzzing… it's almost like when Kisaki went nuts the other day. I've got a bad feeling about this…"

"Heh," Reid said, turning away from the other two and starting to walk off down the hallway. "Maybe you're right. But I've still got a job to do."

With that, Reid took off running at full speed toward the nearest staircase, hoping to cut off the source of the sudden flare-up of Fangirl energy before it could move too far from where it had strated. It wasn't long before he came upon the scene of the crime, so to speak—after several turns and a couple minutes of running in the direction of the initial burst of power, he came upon a hallway littered with rubble of all shapes and sizes. And materials, for that matter; some of the stone had been transformed into splintered pieces of wood and strange, iridescent crystals of all different colors. Closing his eyes and focusing on the heartbeat-like pulse of the Fangirl energy in the air around him, he pinpointed its direction and then took off running once again.

Not far away, Kisaki was barreling down the hallways at full speed with her spear held at her side, occasionally pausing and looking around with jerky motions that more resembled those of some terrifying giant insect tracking its prey than a normal person. Turning once again, she suddenly found her way blocked by a non-numbered member that she did not immediately recognize.

"Hold it," Reid said, shifting his feet into a battle stance. "You're… Kisaki, wasn't it? Weren't you holed up in one of the cells the other day?"

Kisaki didn't say a word in response.

"Well? Aren't you gonna explain yourself?"

She continued to stare at him for a few moments, then cracked her neck and raised one hand in Reid's direction. A split-second later, greenish energy flared up all around her and a sphere of that same energy went rocketing forward. Reid put up his hands to block, the spikes on his knuckles enlarging to several times their normal size as the orb of green energy clashed against them. For a few seconds, he struggled against the attack, being slowly but steadily pushed backward across the floor by its force; finally, he threw his hands up and deflected it, causing a ceiling light several yards behind him to spontaneously transform into a pile of Gummi Bears and come raining down to the floor below as the chaotic green energy collided with it.

"Whew," he breathed, stopping for a moment with his hands in the same position before returning them to his usual stance. "Well, if that's all you've got… guess I won't be needing any backup after all!"

He charged forward and took a swing at Kisaki, but she easily stepped aside. Three more punches swished past her in rapid succession, each coming just close enough to give the appearance that Kisaki was having difficulty avoiding them without actually suffering so much as a scratch. After letting loose another flurry of dodged punches, he jumped back for a moment before aiming his right fist in her direction and causing the knuckle spikes to disconnect from the main body of the glove-like weapon and go flying toward his opponent like pointy missiles. Kisaki raised her spear and swatted the spikes out of the air with little effort, contact with the green aura around her spear transforming them into rubber bouncy-balls and sending them rocketing off down the nearby hallways in three different directions.

"Hmm," the spiky-haired man said, flexing again so that new spikes flashed into existence on his right fist to replace the ones that had been lost. "Couldn't quite dodge that time, huh?"

He repeated the motion of the previous attack, this time extending both arms in Kisaki's direction. He fired wave after wave of spike-missiles at her this time, stopping after each barrage only to replenish his spikes before letting them fly once again. A cloud of dust began to kick up from the other side of the room as dodged spikes smashed holes in the stone wall behind Kisaki, and before long the dust was so thick that Reid could no longer see his opponent. The buzzing sound still permeated the air, and the powerful Fangirl presence was still there, but there was no sign of movement from the opposite side of the hallway.

"Hmm… there's no way she dodged all of that," he said, popping all six of his spikes back into place simultaneously and stopping for a moment to catch his breath. "Guess she's done already."

He laughed slightly, then sighed. Even after completing his training, he had never been sent off on a major Fangirl extermination mission; he had been hoping this would end up being his first real fight, but if it was over already he'd have to wait for another day.

"Well… that's what always happens when Fangirls mess with Reid Klavier," he said, taking a step toward the other side of the room as the dust began to clear.

Kisaki's glowing red eyes became visible just a moment too late for Reid to react. She came flying out of the dust at full speed, grabbing the black-cloaked warrior by the face with her free hand and slamming him to the floor hard. He attempted to take a swing at her with one of his spiked fists, but she dematerialized her spear for a moment and caught the blow with her bare hand, holding his fist in place with such strength that his entire arm was immobilized.

"You," she snarled, her voice strange and echoing, "Have already wasted too much of my time."

A ripple of green energy spread between Kisaki and Reid for a moment, causing Reid's spiked knuckles to be instantly transformed into a pair of comparatively-harmless cartoonish-looking boxing gloves. He tried in vain to punch at her, but with his weapons in their weakened state he was unable to even make her flinch. He was completely helpless, growing weaker by the moment despite the fact that Kisaki was doing nothing more than pinning him to the ground; it was as if his energy was being rapidly drained away, just like what happened to the victims of Glomper Fangirls' dangerous hugs.

Before long, Reid was unable to summon up enough strength to take another swing. Kisaki stood up and sped off down the hallway just as fast as she had been going before, not even seeming to care that her fallen opponent was not only still alive but still (just barely) clinging to consciousness.

* * *

"Kisaki has occasionally shown a strange case of split personalities," Vexen said, "First she only shifted into this second personality for seconds at a time in several of her training sessions, but recently the shifts have become much longer in duration… and much more dangerous."

"Her eyes glow red, and she becomes uncharacteristically silent," Zexion explained, creating an illusionary image once again to illustrate his point. "Sometimes, her powers flare up in an abnormal way during these outbursts, causing a strange sensation in the air and an inexplicable buzzing sound. And when the outburst ends… her eyes return to normal, and she doesn't remember any of it."

"Recently, however," Vexen continued, "It seems that a _third_ personality has emerged. Though I was, unfortunately, not present to witness this moment, this personality seemed entirely different from both the dangerous, glowing-eyed personality that has occasionally surfaced _and_ the bubbly, cheerful, and oblivious Kisaki that we have come to know."

"It was this side of Kisaki that wrote us the coded message that contained each of your names," Estera said, flipping to the page in her clipboard where the deciphered names were all listed. "Squall Leonhart, Yuffie Kisaragi, Aerith Gainsborough… your names were all hidden in a piece of poetry Kisaki desperately wanted one of our members to read."

"And what's more," Zexion said, "After going back later, we found another name hidden away… Chinatsu Arakaki."

"Also someone named 'Cid Highwind,'" Estera noted, going over the list once again and giving a slightly confused look to the odd name out. "Whoever that is."

Yuffie snickered.

"Heh… Cid stayed home today."

"So," Squall said, ignoring Yuffie's comment and standing up straight again before stepping toward the Organization members. "What are you saying, exactly?"

"You mentioned that Kisaki went in after the Fangirl Queen herself," Vexen said, "And you never saw her come back out. However, it seems to us that she _did_ return… albeit not quite as herself. My hypothesis is that she is being used by the Fangirls or their queen in some way, infiltrating our Organization and working toward some unknown purpose from within."

"By using your friend's body and powers, whatever Fangirl entity is controlling her is able to avoid detection by our systems," Zexion said. "We're not even sure if our most advanced Fangirl-detecting scan could have detected that entity when it was actively keeping itself hidden, since it became active and set off our emergency alarm before the scan could get to it."

He maneuvered his hands about a bit in the air, generating a rough diagram of the situation using his illusion powers. There was a translucent image of Kisaki's body, with a bright pink Fangirlish face floating about inside of her, hidden from the outside world until the moment when it took full control over its host and manifested itself in the form of Kisaki's violent and robotic glowing-eyed split personality.

"Normally, this would be cause for eliminating Kisaki immediately," Vexen said, swiping one hand through Zexion's illusionary image and causing it to distort and then vanish. "But the emergence of this third personality, desperate to get through to anyone who would listen and giving us clues to the identities of her former friends and allies… it seems to suggest that Chinatsu Arakaki, or some remnant of her, still exists within the being we know as Kisaki Kyôshajo."

"She… she's still alive," Squall muttered. "She's being controlled… but she's still in there somewhere."

"And by the sound of things," Aerith said, "She's still fighting against the Fangirls, in her own way, even in the situation she's in."

Zexion nodded slightly.

"It seems that way," he said. "Now the question is… is there some way we can help Chinatsu herself regain control, or even remove the Fangirl entity from her entirely?"

* * *

Yoshi furiously tapped away at the buttons of a video game controller, seemingly oblivious to the Fangirl alarm that blared throughout the base. When it began, he had simply paused his game for a moment and turned up the volume so he could hear it over the obnoxious noise before going right back to what he had been doing before. It wasn't like an inexperienced, untrained member like him was going to be sent off on an extermination mission anyway, so he just kept on as if nothing was wrong.

On the other couch, Roxas just sat and watched as Yoshi blasted through one level after another, clearing the game's single-player mode faster than anyone else he had seen. Though he was more concerned about the Fangirl alarm than his hyperactive companion, he figured that someone else would be on it before too long if Saix hadn't barged into the room and demanded for him to report to the Dimensional Hippievan yet.

For a moment, there was a knock at the door of the room, barely heard over the combined noise of the Fangirl alarm and the blasting music and sound effects of Yoshi's game. Roxas briefly glanced back over his shoulder and called for whoever it was to come in, expecting the doorknob to turn and the door to come slowly swinging open.

Instead, the point of a spear came plunging through the door, nearly splitting it in half from the sheer force of the impact. Before either of the two boys could prepare for an attack, the door was torn off its hinges and came flying at them, smashing into the couch where Roxas was sitting and pinning him to the floor underneath the soft but heavy piece of furniture.

"Gah!", Roxas groaned, catching his breath and then squeezing out from under the couch. "What the heck was that for!?"

He turned toward the door, expecting to see someone standing there, but it was empty. Glancing around the room for a few moments, he finally locked on to the intruder's location—she had chased Yoshi away from his couch and into one of the room's corners, and raised her spear high without a single word.

"What the… Kisaki? What are you doing!?"

Roxas summoned his twin swords in a flash of light and started across the room at a full run, but he wasn't quite fast enough. Kisaki plunged her spear down, piercing Yoshi's chest and pinning the boy to the floor. He yelled out for a moment, then began flailing his arms and legs rapidly, futilely trying to kick or hit his attacker.

"_Roxas, don't do it!",_ Xion's voice called out from within his mind. _"She's—"_

Rather than bothering to pull her weapon out of her unsuspecting victim, Kisaki simply dematerialized it and then summoned a new one in her other hand, turning just as Roxas was within reach and effortlessly blocking both of his blades with its shaft.

"I see," she said, speaking in a distorted voice that Roxas found strangely familiar. "So you've grown attached to that one after all?"

Roxas gritted his teeth and pushed harder against Kisaki's strength, but still wasn't able to budge her.

"What the heck are you talking about?"

"The two of you met once before… on his first birthday, you could say," she said, "You didn't seem to like him very much _then._ Although… you might not remember that after what you've been through."

Roxas pulled back and then slashed at Kisaki from a different angle, though all this accomplished was forcing her to hop aside and dodge rather than blocking with her own weapon. He took another swing, but again she moved aside before his attack could even graze her.

"We've already taken what we wanted from you," Kisaki said, her body becoming surrounded by a bright green aura, "But there was a problem. The Fanboys failed to connect to the hivemind, and now we must dispose of them."

Backing away slightly, Roxas charged his weapons with an aura of light, transforming them once again into the hook-tipped blades that Xion had once wielded. Kisaki just smiled and pointed her spear in the boy's direction, letting out a familiar creepy giggle that instantly reminded Roxas of exactly where he had heard the distorted voice before. His eyes widened in panic as blurry memories of his time spent as a prisoner in the Internet flashed through his mind; Kisaki was speaking with the voice of the Fangirl Queen herself.

"It seems you weren't so useful to us after all, Roxas."

A massive beam of green energy erupted from Kisaki's own aura, swirling around her spear and picking up speed as it went before flying off in Roxas' direction. There wasn't enough time for the boy to do anything but cross his blades in front of his body, hoping to deflect the blast or at least soften the blow. Just before the blast smashed into Roxas, there was a gust of wind throughout the room, and the young Number Thirteen suddenly found himself relocated a dozen feet away, standing near the upturned couch and the remains of the door as the torrent of energy whooshed past and blew a car-sized hole in the outer wall of the room where the doorway used to be. Once he shrugged off the brief dizziness that came with this sudden movement, he glanced around the room, searching for whoever it was who had swooped in and taken him out of harm's way.

"'Ey," a familiar voice said, entering the room along with another whoosh of wind. "Looks like I got here just in time, huh?"

Floating inches off the floor in the middle of the room, two dragon-shaped lances in hand, was Xaldin. He hovered above the area of warped stone and melted carpet left behind in the wake of the blast for a few moments, then touched down with a surprisingly lightness for someone of his size before shifting his stance and facing Kisaki.

"Y'know, I wanted to give you a chance," he said, face hardening as he addressed the glowing-eyed thing in front of him that now only vaguely resembled the Kisaki he knew. "But turning on us like this, attackin' some kid who can't even fight back… this is just goin' too far."

Kisaki stared at the hairy elf for a few seconds, then let out a distorted shriek and charged, thrusting her spear toward Xaldin just before reaching him. He raised one of his own weapons to block, causing sparks to fly as the blade of Kisaki's spear ground against the shaft of one of his own. For a moment, the two clashed against each other, neither one able to push the other back, but finally Xaldin added his second lance into the equation and sent his opponent flying backward into the nearest wall.

Kisaki slammed into the solid stone so hard that she left a dent in the shape of her body behind, but otherwise didn't seem to be affected, springing back in Xaldin's direction so quickly that he was forced to sidestep her attack rather than deflecting it. Her spear, missing its intended target, instead sliced through the back of the old TV behind where he was standing like a hot knife through butter, splitting the plastic casing in half and sending shattered glass and broken internal components flying across the room. Xaldin took a moment to call out to Roxas, summoning a third lance in a swirl of wind as he spoke.

"Roxas! You'd better grab Yoshi and get outta here—this room's not gonna hold up too well once I go all out."

The boy blinked, then nodded, dashing past Xaldin at full speed and scooping up the wounded boy lying in the corner. He paused for a moment while Kisaki and Xaldin clashed just a few feet away, exchanging blows so rapidly that he could barely track their movements, then ran across the room and leaped over what was left of the fallen couch before taking off down the hallway.

"It's pointless," Kisaki said, briefly forcing Xaldin back with a flare of her green energy so large that it warped the floor underneath her feet. "The first of the Fanboys is already dying. There is nothing your healer can do to stop that now."

Xaldin raised an eyebrow.

"First Fanboy, huh?", he said, lashing out with two of his three weapons and forcing Kisaki to contort herself in a way that didn't seem physically possible to dodge his blows. "I don't know what the hell you're talkin' about. You sayin' Yoshi is one of them?"

Kisaki just grinned and giggled, firing off a sphere of green energy that nearly threw Xaldin off balance as he spun out of the way just in time to dodge it. He called forth a fourth spear, causing it and the third he had already been wielding to float alongside him in the aura of swirling winds that was slowly building up around him. Already the winds were causing the smaller bits of debris littering the room to stir and scuttle across the floor; as they picked up speed, these small chunks lifted off and began to orbit around Xaldin, though fortunately there weren't quite enough of them to obscure his view just yet. There was a reason why Xaldin preferred to fight outdoors.

Xaldin grunted slightly and lunged forward, thrusting two of his lances in Kisaki's direction while the other two slashed at her from either side. She raised up her own spear just in time to block, but Xaldin pulled his two hand-held weapons back and planted one of his boots right in her stomach before she could react, sending her tumbling backward through the wreckage of the destroyed TV. She caught herself and backflipped to her feet, landing on the distorted remains of the couch. For a moment, she stood perfectly still; just when Xaldin was about to make a move, the green aura around her flared up even more powerfully than before, and she charged forward with her spear held overhead, a massive blade of chaotic energy forming around its point.

Xaldin summoned the last of his two lances just seconds before impact, controlling all six of the weapons in formation so that they formed a shield of whirling metal in front of him just in time to intercept Kisaki's attack. The blade of energy was just too strong for this last-second defense, however; Xaldin and his lances both were pushed back the instant the attack hit, quickly being pushed up against the wall.

"Damn it!"

The energy-blade sliced through two of Xaldin's lances and sent the others spinning out of control, embedding themselves into the floor, walls, and ceiling. Their owner lurched to the side just in time to avoid being slashed as well, but this wasn't enough to get out of the way entirely—when the green energy collided with the wall behind him, it erupted into a massive explosion, causing the stone to crumble instantly and sending Xaldin flying across the next room over, smashing through two bookcases as he went before finally landing flat on the floor and sliding into a third. He groaned for a moment, but then shoved aside the books and splintered wood that had landed all over him, pulled himself back to his feet, and summoned a new set of six spears to replace those that had been broken and scattered just seconds before. Though he'd probably be a little sore the next day after taking a hit like that, Xaldin wasn't anywhere near done yet.

Not long afterward, Kisaki approached the hole her attack had left in the wall separating the two rooms, shoving a few twisted water pipes aside as she went. Finally, she came close enough to get a glimpse of Xaldin, who was already back on his feet. For a moment, she didn't notice the odd fact that his hands were empty and that his six near-identical weapons were nowhere to be seen; by the time she had picked up on that oddity, it was too late. The six spears, interlinked into the shape of a long-bodied Asian dragon, suddenly smashed through one of the doors leading out into the hallway, powerful winds guiding their movements and causing the fallen books and rubble of the storage room to go flying off in all directions as the combined weapons passed. Xaldin raised one hand and motioned in Kisaki's direction, and immediately the dragon of spears turned toward her in mid-flight and picked up speed.

Kisaki clutched her spear in both hands and raised it up in front of her, blocking the "jaws" of the dragon with the weapon's shaft, but soon found herself being propelled across the room as Xaldin's combined weapons continued to move. The lances shoved her back through the hole in the wall, across the next room, and out into the hallway before finally slowing down. The spears shifted a bit and the powerful wind-elemental energy that moved them suddenly surged, causing the sound of hurricane-force winds to howl throughout the hallway which had previously been near-silent. Kisaki tried to shove the combined lances away and escape, but her own weapon was wedged too tightly between them.

Xaldin walked out into the hallway just in time to see his attack unleashed, a powerful stream of wind pushing Kisaki back with such force that she was unable to hold on to her spear and went flying backward down the hallway, slamming into the walls, floor, and ceiling as the spiraling winds spun her around in all directions from one end of the hall to the other. Before long, she had been thrown so far that Xaldin could no longer see her, and his six lances disconnected from each other and hovered back to their usual positions around their master.

For a moment, Xaldin dematerialized one of his lances in order to scratch one of his sideburns. He then brought the sixth of his weapons back into existence and began to walk down the hallway, surveying the damage caused by his own attack as well as Kisaki's repeated impacts with every surface along its length. Lexaeus was going to be busy with repairs for a while, it seemed.

On the other end of the hallway, Kisaki slowly and awkwardly pulled herself to her feet. Her cloak was torn in several places, one of her gloves had slipped free of her hand and was now likely lying on the floor somewhere further down the hall, and her entire body was bruised, scraped, and sore… though after managing to standing upright she didn't seem to care about or even notice any of these injuries. The one thing that seemed to catch her attention was a small smear of red blood on the floor, just a few feet ahead of where she had finally landed. Feeling around on her own face, she finally found the small cut just above her eyebrow that was its source, touching it lightly with her one gloveless hand and then staring at it as if fascinated.

"Ooh," she said, the tone of her echoing voice almost seeming to slip back into one more appropriate for her usual personality for a moment. "That's never happened before."

She sniffed the tiny spot of red liquid for a moment, then lowered her finger slightly and _licked_ it instead, before wiping what was left on her cloak. As Xaldin entered her field of vision, she held out her other hand and summoned her spear with a roar of static, flooding the hallway with a stronger form of the same strange feeling in the air that had permeated it ever since her eyes began to glow red. For a moment, the weapon's form flickered a bit, with tiny bolts of red and blue electricity sparking across its surface every time it solidified, but Kisaki didn't seem to notice this disturbance; she just stared down the hall toward her opponent as her face once again split open into a wide grin.

"Not done yet, huh?", the hairy elf said, bracing himself and subtly shifting his feet into his stance as he came within sight of Kisaki. "Should've known… you've always been pretty tough for somebody with only a month or two of training."

She just giggled in response, gripping her spear with both hands and pointing the weapon in his direction. For a moment, the red and blue sparks appeared around the shaft of her weapon again, but they were quickly replaced with glowing green sparks which rapidly grew in intensity until they had become a small storm of green electricity swirling around Kisaki's spear. She thrust the weapon forward and a bolt of bright-green energy mimicking its shape flew out from its point, forcing Xaldin to jump to the side to avoid it; the sharp edge of the energy-spear nicked the side of his cloak and left a gash behind, but wasn't quite close enough to touch his skin.

"_Aim's not too bad, either,"_ he thought, readying his lances and beginning a charge in Kisaki's direction. _"Especially considerin' how busted-up her arms must be by now… I'm gonna have to be careful."_

As Xaldin approached, Kisaki slowly backed away down the hallway, firing one spear-shaped bolt of energy after another in his direction every time he swerved out of the way of the previous blast. Every time, the blades were just a fraction of an inch from connecting with their target; Xaldin's reflexes were too quick for Kisaki to catch up to him even from such a short distance, but only just barely. When he was almost within a spear's-length of Kisaki, she suddenly spun to the side and then lunged and swung the side of her spear's head toward him, generating a wave of cutting energy that filled the entire hallway (even slicing into the walls alongside it) as it rocketed toward Xaldin. He jumped just in time to clear the attack, though not quite fast enough to prevent it from slicing the trailing edges of his cloak clean off. As the shredded material fluttered to the floor, Xaldin stopped just short of landing on his feet, instead propelling himself forward with his wind-manipulating powers and directing all six of his lances toward Kisaki at full force.

Kisaki's eyes widened for a moment, and she lashed out with her spear once again, launching the last of the crackling green energy upward so that it sliced four of Xaldin's weapons in two as they approached her. The two in his hands, however, had been carefully pulled back to avoid this attack, and when Xaldin dove forward both of them pierced into Kisaki's shoulders, the force of the impact shoving her to the ground under her much larger opponent's weight. Kisaki let out an unearthly shriek as the two blades cut clear through her body and pinned her to the ground.

"You're done," Xaldin said, gripping his two weapons tightly and pressing down on Kisaki's midsection with one of his knees. "Go ahead 'n' give up."

Kisaki just stared up at him and snarled, then gasped slightly as he pushed a bit more weight onto her.

"You'll live if you quit now. Marluxia oughta be able to patch up those wounds if we get ya to 'im quick. I should know… I've had worse."

For a moment, Kisaki went completely silent. Then, she just sighed, the red glow fading from her eyes and their usual silvery color returning. Her weapon, fallen to the ground beside her, flickered for a moment before dematerializing.

"Good choice," he said, standing back up again and dematerializing his own weapons. "Now, hold still so I can get ya over to—"

Before he could finish his sentence, the red glow returned to the seemingly-defeated girl's eyes, and she let out a roar that seemed to shake the very foundations of the Organization's base. Green sparks of electricity surged around both of her shoulders, and the blood which had begun to leak out and saturate her cloak seemed to vanish. Within seconds, only the holes poked through the cloak itself remained; even the small injury to the forehead she had received earlier in the fight flickered with green light for a moment before sealing itself up and vanishing. Only a few tiny specks of blood that had already dried remained.

"What in the…"

Before he could do much more than take a few steps back, Kisaki stood up without even using her hands for support, leaping straight from her position on the ground to her feet. She shrieked once again and the green aura around her flared up more powerfully than ever before, expanding until it was so wide that it nearly filled the entire hallway. The buzzing sound grew into a roar, reminiscent of the "snow" of a television that wasn't turned to any channel when the volume was turned up too high; Xaldin had to force himself not to cover his ears. Starting from her eyes and spreading outward, glowing green lines resembling those on computer circuits traced themselves across her entire body. Xaldin quickly summoned his lances in a rush of wind, not knowing what to expect after this but knowing that going into it unarmed was unlikely to be a wise decision.

Xaldin almost gasped at the sight of what came next. The circuitboard-like designs from Kisaki's body began snaking across the floor, rapidly spreading from her feet across the floor and then creeping up the walls in every direction. Kisaki's aura exploded, forcing Xaldin to cover his eyes to avoid being blinded as the green light grew so bright that it almost appeared white.

When he opened them up again, he wasn't sure what to think. The stone hallway of the Organization's mountain base seemed to have completely vanished, leaving only Xaldin and Kisaki standing in a room that appeared to be made of semi-translucent dark green glass that slowly pulsed with light from within in a brighter shade of green. The computer-component lines that had spread out from Kisaki's location before now covered every inch of the space, with barely-visible translucent lines even flickering in and out of sight in the air itself occasionally. Xaldin focused his attention back to Kisaki, noticing that she had shed her Organization XIII uniform entirely and replaced it with some sort of skin-tight black suit decorated with a chaotic assortment of circuit lines, zeroes, ones, and fragments of all different languages. Her hair seemed to be standing on end, waving about in the air almost as if it had come to life on its own, like a mass of worms or tentacles. She glanced around her new surroundings for a moment, then smiled and let out a distorted giggle.

"Ah… I see," she said, her voice sounding even more distorted and echoing that before, "I'm only capable of seizing a small space like this right now… It seems my reach hasn't yet expanded as far as I had thought."

She held out one hand and summoned her weapon once again, though it seemed to require more effort than before; it flickered in and out of existence rapidly for a few moments, occasional sparks of red and blue electricity interfering, before finally Kisaki forced it into being with a quick burst of her power.

"Even so," she continued, "In this space… I won't be so limited by the weaknesses of this girl's body anymore."

Xaldin frowned and shifted into a different stance, furrowing his brow and gripping two of his lances with one hand each. A sphere of powerful winds swirled up all around him, causing his hair and what was left of his cloak to flutter wildly as he lifted up off the ground and hovered in midair with the other four of his weapons orbiting around him, awaiting his command. The weapons themselves almost seemed to be shaking in anticipation of the fight to come.

"This space is my world," Kisaki said, raising her spear in her opponent's direction, "Removed from all outside. You have no hope of backup arriving to save you now."

Green electrical sparks surged up around her spear once again, charging up to full strength almost instantly when the circuit-like markings on every surface of the strange room glowed brighter for a moment.

"Xaldin, Number Three of Organization XIII… it's time for you and those hideous sideburns to die."


	34. The Impaler III

**Chapter 33**  
_~ The Impaler III ~_

In the Fangirl Detection System room, Lexaeus stared at the screen in front of him and frowned. Just moments before, Xaldin and Kisaki's energy signatures were coming through as clearly as ever, clashing against each other near the end of one of the base's many hallways; now, they had both abruptly vanished from the system's screen. The emergency Fangirl alarm that had previously been blaring throughout the base was now silent, no longer detecting the frighteningly powerful Fangirlism levels that Kisaki had been putting off prior to her disappearance. But they hadn't simply been transported out of the base somehow—the modifications Vexen had made to the system after returning from his trip into the Internet to rescue Roxas made sure of that. No portals to the Internet had been detected, and yet somehow, any trace of energy from either of the two had disappeared.

Roxas ran into the room, stopping to catch his breath for a moment before walking over and plopping himself down in one of the vacant chairs. He turned toward Lexaeus, noticing the look on his face, and then spoke.

"Hey… is Xaldin okay back there?"

"It's hard to say," the larger man mumbled, fiddling with the controls of the Fangirl Detection System for a moment in an attempt to see if the settings had just been thrown off by the surges of power that had rippled through the base as a result of the fight. "He was in good shape the last time the system was able to detect him, but…"

Roxas took a look at the screen in front of Lexaeus, noticing for the first time that the symbols representing Xaldin and Kisaki were nowhere to be found. The other screens rapidly shifted from one room of the base to the next, seeking out traces of either Xaldin or Kisaki, but never seeming to pick up on anything strong enough to register as either of the two warriors' presence.

"What about Yoshi?", Lexaeus asked. "Will Marluxia be able to treat his injuries?"

For a moment, Roxas was silent. Then, sighing, he shook his head slightly.

"He… didn't make it," the boy said, slumping back in his chair and hanging his head. "Right as I got him to sickbay… he started glowing green and shattered… just like a Fangirl."

"So what Kisaki said was true, then," Lexaeus muttered. "Yoshi was a Fanboy all along…"

"I dunno," Roxas said, "I mean, he was always a little weird, but… he never seemed like one of those monsters to me. Fangirls and Fanboys are supposed to be like a hivemind, right?"

Lexaeus nodded. For a moment, Roxas was silent; then, suddenly, he remembered something that Kisaki had said during their recent encounter. _The Fanboys have failed to connect to the hivemind, so now we must dispose of them._

"Wait a second… that's it," Roxas said, sitting upright. "That's why Kisaki went after him… she said something about Fanboys not connecting to the hivemind right after stabbing him."

"Interesting," Lexaeus said. "So there was a flaw in the method they used to create Fanboys…"

"It was me," Roxas mumbled. "That has to be it. The reason some of the Fanboys aren't mixing in with the Fangirls, aren't losing all of their individuality like the rest… it's because they used _my_ energy to help create them."

"Hmm… it's true that gaining powers like those we possess seems to provide immunity to the Fangirlization process," Lexaeus noted. "So… it's possible that the process through which the Fangirl Queen created Fanboys somehow passed on a diluted form of that immunity…"

For a few seconds, the room was completely silent aside from the quiet hum of the computer systems and the occasional tapping of Lexaeus' fingers against the keyboard. Then, finally, Lexaeus spoke once again.

"We'll focus on that question later," he said, tapping in a series of commands. "Right now, we need to figure out where Kisaki and Xaldin have gone."

* * *

Inside the green room, Xaldin and Kisaki clashed once again, the black-cloaked elf's six lances rapidly flying about in order to deflect every thrust and slash from Kisaki's own weapon. Eventually, Xaldin saw an opening, but when he thrust one of his weapons forward Kisaki grabbed it by the shaft, causing it to transform into a broom with a ripple of greenish energy. The dry, brittle straw at the end of the unlikely weapon made contact with Kisaki's midsection, but rather than harming her in any way it just crumpled on impact before the entire broom was shattered by a swift kick.

Xaldin pulled away and summoned a new spear to replace the one he had just lost, causing the remains of the splintered broom to vanish as his sixth lance reappeared in his hand. Kisaki charged, green electricity sparking around her weapon, but before she was able to strike Xaldin was surrounded by a powerful surge of wind which sent her flying backward. The energy surrounding her spear flew off wildly, colliding with the green, circuit-laced ceiling and fizzling out into nothingness.

"_So those energy blades don't even put a dent in that stuff,"_ he thought, looking up at the spot where the misdirected attack had made its impact. _"Guess I won't be able to just bust outta here, then…"_

Xaldin readied himself for another attack and flew off toward Kisaki, winds rapidly picking up speed and spiraling around him in a protective sphere as he went. Kisaki raised up her hand and fired a series of glowing green orbs in his direction as he approached, but the winds caught each of them and flung them off in various directions, preventing them from getting anywhere near Xaldin himself. Letting go of the two lances he was holding so that they could swirl around him along with the other four, Xaldin sped up and charged head-on toward Kisaki. She raised her spear in an attempt to skewer him as he came close, but three of his lances plunged downward at that very moment and knocked the weapon out of her hand. Two of the remaining three swung out to either side and slammed into Kisaki with their shafts, pinning her between them as Xaldin gripped the one remaining lance in both hands and aimed it straight for Kisaki's chest.

Just as the tip of the blade began to pierce her clothing, an explosion of green energy flared up around her, transforming the three lances into harmless brooms just like what happened before and sending Xaldin spinning backward through the air. When he came to a stop, the winds swirling around him slowed for a moment before abruptly transforming into spaghetti noodles and tumbling down.

"Hmph," Xaldin hmphed, shaking noodles loose from his hair and brushing a few stray ones off of his shoulders before continuing. "Changin' my weapons _and_ powers into somethin' that can't hurt ya… just like a Cracky Fangirl. Wasn't expectin' that one…"

Before he could summon another set of lances, Kisaki fired a sphere of green energy right at him. The blast flew into his chest and exploded, sending him slamming into the wall behind him. Though it looked like glass, it certainly didn't _feel_ like glass on impact; the wall didn't give way at all, and when Xaldin groaned slightly and stumbled forward away from it there wasn't so much as a tiny crack left behind. Noticing that something about him felt different than before, he glanced down at his cloak and found that it had been transformed into some sort of military-style uniform. Shrugging, he summoned another set of six lances; he wasn't going to let something as insignificant as a change of clothes slow him down for even a second.

By this time, Kisaki had retrieved her own weapon and had once again charged it with green electricity. She fired a series of spear-shaped energy bolts in Xaldin's direction, but he deflected each of them with a wall of gale-force winds, sending them flying back in her direction and forcing her to dive to the floor and roll out of the way to dodge them. When she sprung back up and fired more of these beams, Xaldin countered by flinging his own weapons to intercept them in midair. One after another, Kisaki's spear-bolts collided with Xaldin's spinning lances, destroying both in the process. Finally, Xaldin was left with no weapons, and Kisaki grinned; her own spear was still charged with energy just like before.

"You're out of spears," she said, clutching the shaft of her weapon with both hands and aiming it toward him. "How are you going to block the next one, hmm?"

She giggled maniacally, thrusting her spear forward and letting loose the last of the electrical charge that surrounded it. Just when she was sure that her attack was going to impale Xaldin, he suddenly called forth six more of his own weapons, launching one so that it intercepted her attack and the others in Kisaki's direction all at once. Abruptly forced to stop giggling, she charged her spear with energy again and shot down each of the incoming spears, the fifth one stopping just inches from her face before it shattered and disappeared. Once again, an unarmed Xaldin stood on one side of the room, with Kisaki's spear still charged with energy and ready to fire again.

"Sacrificing your own weapons and summoning them over and over again," she said, "You can't keep that up forever… can you?"

Xaldin's only response was to call forth another six spears and launch them in Kisaki's direction. Before those six had even been intercepted, he materialized more and more of them, launching them across the room six at a time. Kisaki snarled and surrounded her spear with electricity, shooting down lance after lance with the same bolts of energy she had been firing from its tip before. When it became clear that Kisaki was fast enough to intercept them every time, Xaldin stepped things up even further, generating a powerful wind that blew in a straight line from his side of the room to the other and propelled the flying lances with even greater speed. Kisaki was now forced to dodge some of the incoming projectiles rather than simply shooting them all down, though this was made even more difficult by the fact that the wind was growing strong enough to slowly push her back toward the wall.

"Maybe I can't keep this up forever," Xaldin said, gritting his teeth slightly as he sent another half-dozen spears rocketing down the hallway at speeds that would worry even Larxene, "But from the way things're startin' to look from here, I won't have to."

After letting another barrage of his weapons fly, he clenched one hand into a fist, pulled back, and then thrust it forward. The wind that had previously only been slightly pushing Kisaki back intensified for just a moment, sending her slamming into the wall and momentarily breaking her concentration. Xaldin called forth a single lance and threw it at full force, clearing the length of the room in a fraction of a second.

For the first time in a while, the hail of pointy projectiles from each side of the room stopped. Kisaki was pinned to the wall by a spear through the gut, with several more clattered on the floor alongside her for a moment before vanishing, having come close enough to graze her sides but only leaving shallow cuts behind. Xaldin called forth five spears, leaving the one that had pierced Kisaki's body in place, and slowly began to walk across the room.

Kisaki snarled, then reached down and pulled the lance free of her body, transforming it into a useless broom before tossing it aside. Blood splattered on the floor of the green room for a moment, but then rapidly dried up and vanished as green sparks crackled furiously around Kisaki's wounds. Before Xaldin could even clear the distance between the two of them, her injuries had once again been healed, leaving only tears in her clothing behind.

"I told you," she said, almost hissing at him. "This space is my world. Cut and stab me all you like… it won't do you any good here."

* * *

Xigbar stood in the hallway where Xaldin and Kisaki had been last detected before their disappearance, pacing up and down it in an attempt to figure out just what had happened. He had been informed about the situation by Lexaeus just moments before, but it still didn't make any sense to him; how could they have simply disappeared from the base without transporting through the Internet like Fangirls usually did?

Heading back toward the end of the battered hallway where the fighting seemed to have stopped, he paused for just a moment as his elven ears picked up on a faint hint of sound that didn't seem to fit his surroundings. He stood perfectly still, listening to see if he could detect the sound again; about a minute passed, and then once again it came—a faint crackling from a few feet away. He took a few steps in the direction of the sound, and that was when he saw it.

"What the hell?"

Hovering a few feet above the ground was what appeared to be a tiny pinpoint of light, as if shining through from a barely-visible hole in… the air. Though there was quite clearly nothing there for there to be light shining through from, there was also quite clearly a bit of light shining through. For a moment, tiny sparks of blue and red electricity crackled around the light, and then what was previously a pinpoint expanded into a larger (though still barely visible) crack.

"A crack… in the air," he muttered, "Damn… things around here just keep gettin' weirder and weirder, don't they?"

He scratched his head for a moment and then crouched down slightly so that he was on eye level with the mysterious phenomenon. After staring at it with his one good eye for a few seconds, he reached out with one hand and attempted to touch the crack, finding his finger repelled by some sort of invisible force the moment he touched the region of air where the anomaly had formed.

"_Well… that's somethin',"_ he thought, standing upright once again but still focusing his attention on the crack. _"Damned if I know how to get in there, but... I'll bet whatever's on the other side of _this_ is gonna be where those two disappeared off to."_

* * *

"Whoa," Roxas said, pointing at the screen. "Xaldin's symbol!"

"What? Where?", Lexaeus asked, focusing on the main screen once again. He didn't see any sign of Xaldin's energy signature in the map of the hallway; it looked just like before, with the only change being that Xigbar was now in the hallway investigating Xaldin and Kisaki's disappearances.

"It was only there for a second," the boy said, "But I saw it on there. He reappeared on the map just like that, and then… disappeared again."

"Hmm… strange," Lexaeus said. "It's only detecting Xigbar in that hallway right now… but you're right, the system _did_ briefly pick up on Xaldin's energy signature in that hallway."

The two stared up at the screen, watching Xigbar's marker slowly pacing back and forth again. Just like before, the hallway showed no sign of either Xaldin or Kisaki.

"I hope he's okay," Roxas mumbled. "Wherever he is. We can't lose two members in one day…"

Lexaeus patted him lightly on the shoulder.

"Xaldin's among the strongest in the Organization," he said, pausing a moment before continuing. "However powerful Kisaki may have become, and wherever she may have taken him… Xaldin _will_ come out of this alive."

* * *

Back in the bizarre green room where the battle with Kisaki raged unseen by anyone outside, Xaldin propelled himself backward away from Kisaki just in time to avoid the brunt of a new attack. Kisaki had charged energy into her spear once again, but this time rather than simply firing it off as a single bolt, she slammed the head of the spear against the ground, sending shrapnel-like spikes of energy flying off in all directions. Xaldin's newly-transformed clothes, previously unharmed despite his cloak's damaged condition, were now riddled with holes and slashes; a few drops of blood fell to the ground as he shifted his weight and brought his lances back into position around himself, confirming that it was more than just his clothes that had gotten cut up.

"Ooooh," Kisaki said, grinning creepily and cocking her head to the side. "You didn't dodge _that_ very well, now did you?"

Xaldin grunted, then let go of one of the two lances he had previously held on to, holding his now-empty hand out to his side. Swirling winds began to converge in the area, condensing into a sphere of raging blue-green wind-energy that hovered inches above his hand.

"Yeah, wasn't expectin' that one," he said, winding his hand back as if about to pitch a baseball. "But before you start braggin' about it… how 'bout you try dodgin' _this?_"

With that, he hurled the orb of wind directly at Kisaki. She jumped to the side out of its path and giggled; even the spears he had been throwing before were faster than that. She realized her mistake just a moment too late; the sound of swirling winds coming up behind her reached her ears just moments before the attack itself did, slamming into her back and launching her forward. She slowed her travel by plunging her spear into the floor below, but still stopped within range of Xaldin's lances, forcing to her to bend over backward to avoid them when they all came thrusting forward at once. Each of the pointy weapons then turned toward the floor and dove after her, forcing her to roll out of the way once again. This time, she wasn't quite quick enough—before she could stand up again, the last of the weapons came down blade-first in the side of her leg, slicing through her clothes instantly and leaving a shallow wound behind. Though she quickly turned it into a broom and smashed it to bits, Xaldin was on the attack again before she could do much else, lashing out with a flurry of slashes and stabs. She raised up her own weapon to deflect the brunt of these attacks, but still suffered a series of wounds to her arms and torso that made her stumble back and almost lose her balance.

"_She's just gonna heal again,"_ Xaldin thought, already spotting the first flickers of green electricity that had come to reverse her injuries every other time he had managed to land a solid hit on his opponent. _"But if I don't give 'er a chance to rest, then maybe…"_

Going along with this plan, he lunged forward and blasted Kisaki with another homing ball of wind before her regeneration could take effect, hoping that this would throw her off-balance long enough for him to ready another attack. She was thrown into one of the walls once again, colliding with the green glass-like barrier that surrounded the strange space in right about the same spot where she had been briefly pinned against the wall earlier. Xaldin charged up another sphere of wind and threw it immediately before he himself lunged forward with all six of his lances ready to attack. Kisaki recovered from the last blow she had suffered just in time to counter his wind attack with a blast of her own green energy, but by this time Xaldin was right on top of her; his lances all thrust forward at once, one being deflected off to the side by a quick swing of Kisaki's own weapon but the rest hitting home.

For a few moments, there was utter silence in the green room; even the static buzz that had been nearly constant since the battle started was nowhere to be found. Then, Kisaki let out a shriek, throwing Xaldin back with an eruption of her power that transformed each of his weapons first into brooms and then into little more than ashes as they disintegrated away from the force of the attack. Xaldin caught himself in midair and hovered there thanks to his wind powers, resummoning his six lances for what had to have been at least the twentieth time that day. Though he hadn't been keeping track, he was sure that had to be his record.

Kisaki stood completely still for a moment, just staring down at her own still-bleeding wounds, then breathed heavily and growled as she focused her attention back on Xaldin. She was no longer grinning; the look on her face now was pure anger.

Just like before, the green electricity returned, first sealing up the minor slashes on her leg and both arms before moving on to heal her other wounds. The sheer amount of energy crackling about her upper torso, sealing up the massive chest wound she had sustained from being run through by five of Xaldin's six lances, cast so much green light that it reflected off of every surface in the room, causing both of the two fighters to briefly appear to have multiple shadows. And then came something neither of them expected: a small sound like breaking glass.

Kisaki froze, the look of rage on her face intermingling with a new one—confusion. For a brief moment, her red eyes flickered back to silver, though the angry red glow quickly reasserted itself. She turned toward the direction of the sound, noticing that the green wall behind her was now marred with a rather large crack.

"WHAT!?"

She snarled for a moment, noticing a few streaks of blue and red electricity snaking around the crack. For a moment, the two-colored sparks of energy intensified, and another breaking-glass sound accompanied the crack growing even larger and a tiny chunk of the mysterious glass-like material that made up the barrier crumbling away into nothing and allowing white light to shine in from… whatever was outside the enclosed space.

"No," she said, turning away from the crack and charging energy in her spear once again. "That shouldn't be possible… I have total control over this space! There's no way your weapons could have cracked that wall!"

"Yeah… that's what I thought too," Xaldin said, catching his breath for a moment and then readying for another attack. "Guess we were both wrong about that one, huh?"

* * *

"It's been half an hour since they disappeared now," Lexaeus said, turning away from the monitor for a moment and toward Slobodan and several other members who had joined him in the Fangirl Detection System's room. "We detected Xaldin's energy for a brief moment earlier, but ever since then there's been no sign of—"

"He's back again!"

Roxas pointed to the screen, and everyone turned to look simultaneously before the symbol marking the Organization's Number Three vanished once again. Just as the boy had said, Xaldin's symbol had once again reappeared on the map, this time remaining in place for several seconds before flickering out and disappearing just like before.

Lexaeus reached down and pressed a button on one of the computer systems below the main desk, then spoke into a microphone sitting nearby.

"Xigbar," he said, "We just detected Xaldin's presence in the hallway. Any sign of a change out there?"

Lexaeus' voice projected out through the entire base thanks to the speaker system that was usually reserved for Fangirl alarms, and seconds afterward Xigbar's response came through the much smaller speakers connected to the Fangirl Detection System itself.

"You bet there was," he muttered. "Didn't see that comin' at all… I was this close to shootin' a wall just now."

Once again, Lexaeus spoke into the microphone.

"What happened?"

"Loud-as-shit glass-shattering sound," Xigbar replied, "And y'know that little crack in the air I told ya about a while back? Ain't so little anymore. I'd say maybe two feet tall, almost big enough to fit a finger in if the damn thing'd let me get anywhere near it… maybe a fist-sized chunk busted out right in the middle."

There was a brief pause, and then Xigbar continued.

"Oh yeah… one more thing," he said, "Any of you up there ever seen red 'n' blue electricity show up anywhere? 'Cuz there's a ton of it sparkin' up around this crack now."

* * *

Once again, Xaldin narrowly avoided a shower of green energy shards, deflecting most of the dagger-sized projectiles with a shield of wind and flying backward out of range before Kisaki could unleash another of the shrapnel-like blasts in his vicinity. Ever since she had noticed the crack forming in the green room's wall, Kisaki had been fighting even more furiously than before, focusing entirely on an all-out offense rather than occasionally pausing to comment on the situation or heal minor wounds caused by Xaldin's many near-misses. Though Xaldin had no idea what it all meant, it was clear that the crack in the wall was a bad thing for Kisaki; the question now was how he could manage to expand it further, since it was his most likely way out of the place.

Flinging a series of homing wind spheres in Kisaki's direction, Xaldin backed away once again, this time managing to get far enough away to avoid all of the shards that went flying when she slammed her energy-charged spear into the floor once again. A handful of these small blades clashed against the cracked portion of the wall before fizzling out, but they didn't seem to cause any further damage.

While Kisaki contorted her body to dodge the homing orbs of wind and canceled each of them out with a series of her own energy blasts, Xaldin charged up a much larger version of the same attack between his hands, propelling it forward just as she turned to face him once again. She charged her spear with energy just like many times before and swatted the sphere of wind with it, sending the attack launching back in Xaldin's direction. For a moment, Xaldin smirked slightly; she had forgotten one of the basic rules of dealing with a member of the Organization. The sphere of wind collided with his body and instantly dissipated into nothing, causing his braids to flutter for a moment but otherwise having no effect on him. As the elemental power was absorbed into his body, he felt revitalized—and just in time. He had been breathing heavily before, his strength slowly draining away from the combination of his wounds and the overuse of his powers. Oddly, Kisaki didn't make a move as Xaldin raised his hands in her direction, preparing to unleash an even more powerful blast of wind that would surely smash her into the cracked portion of the wall.

Instead, she just grinned.

"Gah!", Xaldin spat, nearly doubling over as sharp pains shot through his entire body. For a moment, he spotted green electricity crackling around his hands; on closer inspection, it was inching across his chest and legs as well, though in much smaller amounts.

"_Damn,"_ he thought, breathing heavily for a moment as the green energy that had momentarily paralyzed him flickered and faded away. _"What the hell _was_ that?"_

Kisaki charged up the now-familiar green electricity around her spear once again, and it was only at this point that Xaldin noticed that the energy she had charged before had disappeared… despite the fact that the swing she used to deflect his last attack hadn't appeared to release any of its energy like those before it. He briefly raised one hand in Kisaki's direction and attempted to produce a sphere of wind, but once again found himself wracked with pain and surrounded by green electricity. He coughed, noticing right away that he had coughed up a bit of blood.

"_That's it then,"_ he thought, realizing just what was going on. _"When she deflected my attack back at me… she was _expectin'_ me to just let it hit and absorb it. But it ain't just my own power that was in that thing…"_

For a moment, Kisaki giggled, slowly charging even more energy into her weapon. Then she thrust her spear forward, letting a powerful cutting beam fly. Xaldin only barely managed to regain control of his body in time to get out of the way, suffering a nasty gash to the side in the process as the edge of the attack whizzed past him.

"Oh, silly Xaldin," Kisaki said, slowly walking toward him as her spear crackled with energy yet again. "I've been watching you Organization members for _months_ now. I know exactly how you work. Did you really think I would just launch your own power back at you?"

"Yeah, I just figured that little trick out," he grunted, clutching his wounded side for a moment in an attempt to at least slow the bleeding.

He glanced to his side for a moment, confirming that his lances were indeed still floating by him; it seemed only his control over the power of wind was affected by the foreign energy that had been infused into him when he absorbed his own reflected blast, which meant he still had a chance. If Kisaki had truly been paying attention to his abilities, she would know better than to think disabling only his powers without doing a thing about his weapons would render him helpless. He shifted his stance, gripping two of his lances in his hands and letting the others hover alongside him, then just waited for Kisaki to come closer.

"Going on the defensive now?", she asked, face still plastered with the same grin.

Xaldin didn't answer. He was too busy focusing, concentrating on what would come next. With a deep breath and a rumbling grunt, he drew upon as much of his power as he could muster at once, not sure that what he was about to attempt would even work but knowing that he had to try _something._

Kisaki paused in mid-step, creepy grin vanishing from her face almost instantly. All around the room, new lances were appearing in the air, one by one, materializing out of flashes of blue-green energy. Though each hung in a different position, at a different angle, each of the weapons pointed toward her. She raised her spear toward Xaldin in preparation for her own attack, and the speed of the lances picked up; they were now spawning into the room two or even three at a time, surrounding her on all sides and covering every possible escape route.

"Ridiculous!", Kisaki yelled, swinging her spear in an arc so that the blade of energy sliced more than a dozen of the hovering lances apart before charging up another blast. "You're exhausted! You're so focused on forcing out more and more of your fragile little weapons that you can't even _move_ now!"

She giggled maniacally, aiming her spear in Xaldin's direction and intensifying the charge of green electricity around its point. The lances around her began to move, but she all but ignored them; even when the few closest to her position went flying after her, she only shifted herself just enough that they whooshed past her without causing any damage beyond a light scrape which was healed by a crackle of green energy almost instantly.

"You've summoned so many of those silly things," she said, glancing around the room for a moment and taking in just how many of Xaldin's lances were now hovering around her. "And all for nothing. It's too bad you pushed me so far… I would've liked to have shaved off those sideburns and trimmed that hair of yours _before_ finishing you off."

"All for nothin', huh?", Xaldin said, coughing up blood once again as he clenched his right hand into a fist and pulled back. Green sparks crackled up around him, but he only flinched for a moment before continuing. He growled, fighting past the pain as even more green electricity arced across his body, and clenched his other fist, pulling it back just like the first. "Tell me… does this look like _nothin'_ to you!?"

With that, winds erupted from all around Xaldin's body once again, forcing the green energy that had previously been eating away at him from inside to fly off in all directions before rapidly fizzling away. Kisaki's eyes widened; she let out an echoing roar and thrust her spear forward, causing a massive bolt of energy to burst forward from it, but before it could even get within a few feet of Xaldin it had been skewered by nearly twenty lances, the weapons sacrificing themselves in order to shatter Kisaki's attack into countless smaller blades. These tiny blades scattered across the room, a few of them scraping Xaldin's face and chest but most just harmlessly fizzling against the dark-green glass of the walls. The wind around Xaldin picked up and began to expand until it filled the entire room, causing the lances floating around him to rotate at high speeds. Kisaki attempted to dodge them, but there were just too many of them for her to find a safe spot in the storm—the only place in the room where they did not reach was a three-foot radius around Xaldin himself, which was hardly "safe" now that he had summoned two more lances into his own hands. Before long, the winds were flinging Kisaki about from one lance to the next, a few of them being shoved out of the way by kicks and swipes from her own weapon but most managing to cut into her before she could deal with them.

Before long, Xaldin simply couldn't keep up an attack of this scale, and he slumped to one knee, breathing heavily. Sweat poured off of his face, drenching his hair and what was left of the tattered uniform that Kisaki had changed his cloak into earlier; flecks of blood coated the floor all around him, some from his coughs earlier and others from his numerous wounds. Gradually, each of the many lances disappeared from the room, with only the two gripped tightly in the warrior's hands holding onto their existence.

"There," Xaldin mumbled, pulling his head upright with some effort and looking across the room to where Kisaki had landed after the storm had passed. "Got 'er."

For a moment, Kisaki's body did not move; a pool of blood was slowly forming on the floor around her, a sure sign that at least _some_ of Xaldin's hundred lances had hit their mark. Unfortunately, even this didn't last. Kisaki opened up her eyes, shifting back from silver to glowing red, and slowly pulled herself up off the floor, struggling to her knees at first before returning to her feet. Her strange black uniform, once decorated with circuit-like lines and assorted symbols, was reduced to tatters; the color of the skin beneath what was left of those clothes was so covered in blood that its color could barely be discerned.

She did not grin. She didn't even frown. She only stared ahead at Xaldin with a blank look, her eyes glowing red just like before, as bolts of green electricity crackled across nearly her entire body, slowly repairing every last bit of damage one cut at a time. Xaldin hung his head and slammed one of his lances against the floor in frustration; if that hadn't finished her off, nothing would. He had lost. And now…

There was a sound of grass breaking.

Kisaki turned and immediately noticed that the wall to her left was now nearly split in two by a new crack, flooding the room with white light. She snarled, and more green energy surged up around her to seal up her wounds, but for every injury that was healed another crack seemed to form in the walls of the green room. Xaldin, convinced by this sight that maybe he hadn't lost yet, struggled to stand, but couldn't quite muster up enough strength and slumped back to the floor once again.

For a moment, Kisaki's eyes flickered from red to silver and then back. Her face took on an expression that Xaldin hadn't seen before throughout the whole fight—absolute shock. Her wounds were healing, just like before, so she was in no danger of death—but something was wrong. Something was not working the way she had planned.

Blue and red electricity spread across the cracks, linking one to another and causing them to rapidly expand. The one that had opened up first could no longer be called a mere _crack_ anymore, instead resembling more of a gaping hole with many large cracks spreading outward from it. Through the hole, beyond the white light that constantly poured in, Xaldin thought for a moment that he could see a vague outline of the hallway where the fight had started.

As the last of her wounds were healed, Kisaki raised her spear, but when she attempted to charge up power in its tip for another attack, the energy that crackled up was not its usual green but a constantly shifting, strobing mixture of reds and blues. The entire length of the weapon was surrounded by this energy for just a moment before flashing out of existence with such force that it knocked Kisaki to the ground.

"That… that energy," Kisaki hissed. "Blue… and red… this is _your_ doing. But… how!?"

Her eyes flashed to silver. Then, slowly, they faded into a far more natural-looking brown. Kisaki turned toward Xaldin, blinked a couple times, and then smiled. The look on her face was completely unlike that of the Kisaki that he had just been fighting. This wasn't even the Kisaki he had gotten to know over the past two months—the giggling, almost exaggeratedly silly young girl with her obsession with Zexion and her strange and inconsistent mannerisms. This was someone else entirely, someone that Xaldin didn't recognize.

"Thanks," she said, simply but in a way that made it obvious that she truly meant it. "I… don't think I could've done this without you."

With that last simple statement of gratitude, Kisaki's eyes slipped shut and she toppled over onto her back. The blue and red electricity intensified, crackling across the entire room and causing more and more cracks to form, more and more sounds of shattering glass which came along with holes punched through to the outside world. Xaldin could now see the shapes of the hallway and the surrounding rooms quite clearly, though everything was tinted green from what was left of the room's walls.

Just as the room seemed about to completely shatter into nothingness, a flash of green appeared on the floor alongside Kisaki, materializing into a damaged but still functional cellular phone. Her unconscious body convulsed for a moment and was then surrounded by a barely-visible green aura, filling the room with a roar of static and the same strange feeling that had permeated the room during most of the battle. There was a horrible shriek, and the green aura seemed to be violently forced up out of Kisaki's body all at once, hovering in the air in the vague shape of some gigantic tentacled horror for just a moment before diving into the screen of the phone and disappearing. Xaldin dropped his one remaining lance, the weapon disappearing as it hit the floor.

And then, with one last sound of shattering glass, the green room ceased to exist, and both the heavily-weakened Xaldin and his now-unconscious opponent abruptly reappeared in the hallway just as quickly as they had vanished from it before. Xigbar, standing a few yards away, transported himself between the two in an instant and pulled Xaldin to his feet, pulling one of the larger man's arms over his own shoulder to help support his weight.

"Damn, what _happened _to you?", he said, taking a look over Xaldin's condition.

"Nothin' important," Xaldin grumbled, "Don't worry 'bout me."

He pointed over toward the unconscious Kisaki, then continued.

"I can still stagger over to the sickbay on my own," he said, "You're gonna have to carry her."


End file.
